BarrenAlbion

Tired

2012-01-18T04:49:00.001Z

I wanted to blog about happy things - show you pictures of my barn, tell you of the random and probably age-inappropriate interests of my kindergartner, or...or...talk of other things significantly more engaging and lighthearted than my father. My father, the (not-so-recovering) alcoholic, PTSD suffering Vietnam veteran who has - PROUD MOMENT COMING - now graduated to domestic violence and attempted suicide.

I've blogged about him before, and I have recently tweeted about this drama, as it is one of those non-Facebook-type subjects for me. Re-reading those posts from a few years ago, I have just realized that this post does not have to be as long as I originally anticipated it to be, as I don't think I can better summarize my thoughts than what I have already written. I guess it is amplified now perhaps, with the two new elements of abuse and attempted suicide adding a bit more gravity to an already grave situation.

Since 2008, when I wrote about my Dad before, he moved out to California to live with his girlfriend. I have never met her, but my brother has been out to visit them and ascertains that she is quite possibly the kindest person one could ever meet. She has put up with repeated drunken nonsense from my Dad, and for some unknown reason she stood by him throughout what my Dad terms "slip-ups" - a vastly inaccurate term if ever there was one. My brother was always candid with my Dad's girlfriend; he told her after every "slip-up" that my Dad was never going to change. His issues have remained the sole constant in his life for the past 40+ years. They stayed ever-faithful through his marriage to my Mom, and a number of relationships since then. In my Dad's own words, those relationships ended due to various problems instigated by the women. It never had anything to do with him being a paranoid drunk unable to stay sober.

Last week, my brother and The Dude broke the news to me in tandem that my Dad was in jail. DUI? Old news. Dad had moved on to bigger and brighter things like kicking his girlfriend and smashing up her house. She took out a restraining order against him, which we applauded and supported. A day or two passed, and then we found out that my Dad tried to kill himself. This also, is a new development in his pantheon of Bad Behaviour. Even now I'm not sure how, as we have not been able to get through to him at the VA Hospital he may or may not be in. Well, he is there, as mentioned by a staff member the other day who spoke with my Dad to confirm that I could be added to the contact list. However, subsequent phone calls have yielded no response from anyone other than "Ma'am, we can't say whether he is here or not." I have pointed out that I don't need them to confirm, as I already know he is there as he was spoken to by a nurse while I was on hold previously, which would indicate, oh...I don't know...maybe that he is there?

I'm glad of course, as I really need this situation to be complicated further.I have been wrestling with what to say to him if I was put through to the room he may or may not be in. My Dad has never addressed his problems with me. Ever. We gloss right over them and pretend that things are normal. Alcoholism and its effects are the subtext we disregard. Dad is a gruff ex-Marine not prone to discussing feelings, and I have both a fear of confrontation as well as the annoying habit of not wanting to upset anyone. I'm not going to go the route of my brother, which is to usually start these conversations with, "What the fuck is your problem?" I would say something stupid like, "Wow, you're a hard person to get ahold of!" I can type a novel here about it all, or rant to The Dude as to how complicated all of this is, but all I'll ever be able to say to my Dad are polite trivialities.

What if I did manufacture a spine and tell my Dad how much I want to shake him for being so goddamned selfish? Is it fair to do that to someone who has just decided that life isn't worth living? It seems kind of mean to go off on one with someone who has survived a suicide attempt, but then again, we have been tiptoeing around his bullshit for 20 years now. I can agonize over these things for hours, and occasionally I come to the conclusion that all of that thinking was for naught. This illness is too ingrained, too settled in. It's here for the duration, isn't it? The duration was almost up to two days ago, and who knows how much of an extension has been granted. I would love to read about intervention miracles whereby those who have been addicts for decades get better, but I don't read about them because they don't exist. If it hasn't happened now, by his 66th year, it isn't likely to. What stark realization will he have? People talk about needing to hit rock bottom - he presumably hit that in 1996 when he and my Mom split up for good. He was confronted for squandering my college fund, such as it was, and was out of our lives for years. As a parent, I would think rock bottom is not seeing your kids for YEARS because you are too fucked up to be around them. Does it get worse than that? We are years beyond that point now, so I'm not sure what happens next.

I apologise for all of the rhetorical questions. I don't expect answers. I know there aren't definite ones. Re-reading the comments on my old posts on this subject makes me realize that this is the only forum in my life that I can look to for genuine comfort, so thank you - even if you don't know the "right" thing to say.

And here we are again

2012-01-08T00:30:00.002Z

No preamble here about not blogging 9 months, or whatever it has been. I'm just going to launch right into the meaty (though admittedly not thrilling)life updates.

I bought a barn. It is only one third converted, but that converted third is rather large and certainly habitable. It is an amazing, wonderful place, as well as the recipient of all of our "spare" money for the next 20 years in an effort to finish it. It is my haven, and on most days, the saving grace of my sanity. Pictures will follow at some point.

P is in kindergarten and is 5 1/2 at the end of this month. As always, she is equal parts marvelous and frustrating, but such is the life of a parent. She reads confidently and loves to learn - current interests include minerals, dinosaurs, and all things gross (gross science, gross history, etc). I have no idea where time has gone, and I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the baby/toddler thing. I know that is less about P getting older and the changes therein, and more about the whole barren womb thing. Ah, much has changed, but the best things stay the same.

I am still employed at the same place I have complained about in the past. One of the few positives I can say about it is that it has prepared me to work in my field anywhere else on this earth, because I can't imagine that I would be expected to balance as much as I do currently. Expectations are very high as well, and it is far too stressful a job considering the pittance I make. First world problems, blah blah blah.

At this point in time I feel devoted to getting back into this blogging thing, as I think it would help me since I will soon be trying AGAIN in earnest to get pregnant. I have zero faith that I will be successful, in either really - blogging or pregnancy. However, I'm 33 now, have some gray hairs magically appearing with frightening regularity, I read books about barns with a fervor some may find disturbing, and I drive an eco-friendly car which is often purchased by pensioners (so my car salesman said). It's time to grow up, stop being so goddamned flaky and stick to something for once. I blame Facebook and the bloody ease of microblogging, particularly as I'm friends on there with pretty much all 10 people that still have me in their blog feeds.

So yes, barn, kindergartner, still no baby in this vacant womb, hates job. I could have saved us all the trouble and just typed that. Must get back to watching Barbie: Swan Lake with the Sassy Tornado of Hair, Teeth, and Fingernails. Girl may lecture you on Jurassic vs. Cretaceous periods, but in her down time nothing makes her happier than a shitty Barbie movie.

Shut the Front Door

2011-04-24T03:58:00.004+01:00

I am pretty much the laziest and most easily distracted person alive. Despite my failures in communication with blog friends and two completely defunct-through-neglect blogs not to mention this one, I'm starting another venture - Shut the Front Door.

Lately I have wanted to say more here than I can without fear of being outed or compromising my anonymity. It all sounds very dramatic when it couldn't be more pedestrian, as I really just wanted to talk more about job frustrations but don't feel comfortable doing so here. I'm friends on Facebook with people I work with, so that's out, and Twitter...well, what can you really say in 140 characters anyway?

It came to me recently that it would be nice to have a members-only online forum to take any similar concerns private so they were not readable to all of the internet. Yes, there are password-protected posts, but I'll be honest - not only can I not be bothered to do that on my own posts and notify readers of the password, but I never remember others' passwords either. Again with the lazy.

It will be a private forum, and all memberships will need to be approved by me. I want to make sure it is a space in which everyone feels comfortable to share freely without the accompanying paranoia that I get when I talk about certain things on my blog. It's obviously not a replacement blog, because lord knows I would never tend to that either if so, but on the odd occasion you feel the need to talk about work, marital issues, sexual concerns, or if you're worried that your cat is trying to kill you, come hither. There are comment functions, so you would be able to get feedback on what you are saying just as you would on your blog.

It will not be a place for talking about any bloggers in a negative way, so behave yourselves. I also do not intend for any detailed personal information to be posted there, so it's not as if anyone will be providing their addresses, names of places of employment, or even real names of spouses/kids/etc (unless you are comfortable with that). I suppose you could be anonymous based on the name you set up in the account, but I will need to know who you are in the initial stage (as in blog name or connection to this collection of bloggers)for membership purposes. That information would obviously not go beyond my inbox if required of course.

I've started this here. I have no idea whether this site is any good at forum hosting, so we shall see how it goes. If you go to the search box in the upper left of the homepage and type in "Shut the front door" the forum will come up with the option to join. This may work, or it may be a complete fucking disaster. We shall see!

UPDATE: It appears as if forum.com is shit. Not only can some of you not access it, but I as the administrator cannot even log in. Hmph. It is a beta version after all, but really. I guess I will spend some of my evening post-ice cream dinner with P looking at other options.

Still here

2011-04-05T02:56:00.002+01:00

It's so hard to come up with pithy subject titles which allude to the subject to be discussed without being obscenely cliche or cheesy. "Drowning", "HATE HATE HATE", "Grey", "Please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up with all the bellyaching" (and so on) were all considered and promptly binned.

Well, I'm still in the United States, so let's start there. It's strange - there is so, so much I want to say in order for me to try to work out the shit if even just in my own head, but with the amount of things to say it all just becomes tiresome. Half the time I start venting to The Dude and just give up through sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical, and feel the need to retire for a 20 year nap.

I started out in the let's-get-it-all-out mode not a mere 15 minutes ago (yes, it has taken me that long to get this far...shameful), and my head is now a jumble of half-constructed thoughts and random filler that I'll never be able to bring together in this post. I struggle a lot lately with a foggy head and the general inability to express myself coherently, which isn't exactly conducive to my working life either.

I want to talk about why I miss England, and how I possibly don't miss it as much as I think I do. I want to talk about how I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans (except the ones reading this blog) completely lack a sense of humour and are fake, back-stabbing assholes. I want to talk about how, contrary to what your fair selves indicated previously, I really am fucking up my kid's life with startling aplomb. I think I may have said pretty much that exact same thing last time, but I'm running on fumes here.

There is good news amongst all of the talk of dark days and gloomy thoughts - I have now reached the end of my 6 month probationary period at work, so I am eligible for prescription cover. Thus, I will be hot-footing it to my doctor's someday soon to beg for sweet, medicinal relief. The bad parts of life keep elbowing into the sunny slivers which occasionally peek through, and it's not fair to The Dude and P.

Fingers crossed that my next post is not a muddled, confused mess. I don't expect to be jumping out of bed in the morning desperate to go to work, but I want to be able to function like a real human again. I want to write on here, comment on other blogs again - all the stuff I used to do before in The Motherland. You know, before I was crazy that other time. God willing and the Creek don't rise.

Stuck

2011-03-01T02:58:00.002Z

There is an impulse in me to head to my blog when I am down and feel there is nowhere else to go - the histrionic blogging equivalent of drunk dialing. I come here because I want someone to tell me that everything will work out for the best, to offer some brilliant advice which hadn't previously occurred to me. That is my modus operandi in situations like these; I seem to think the only way out will be via direction given by someone else. Rather than addressing the problem(s) myself, I always want to rely on other people to change my way of thinking. As if a snippet of wisdom doled out by you, or by my Mom, life will align and all will be well. Intellectually I know that I am basically fucked, and this is what it is, that no three line comment left here will stop me wondering if life will ever be truly, unreservedly good.

My brain is not currently in a position to devise a well-crafted post, so I will just get it all out there, hit "publish post", and regret it as soon as I do.

I don't like being back here. Every single day I wonder why we have made this move when we were comfortable in the UK in so many ways - we had job security, we owned our own property, P was enrolled in a great school in which she was flourishing. Ok, we didn't actually *like* our jobs, which was the initial impetus to come back to the US. Oh, we had grown out of our flat too and were looking to sell, acknowledging that even in moving to a bigger place we still wouldn't have the space we wanted for P. The US seemed the obvious choice to improve those areas, but guess what? The joke is on us. We can't sell our property in the UK, we spend more in rent per month than we would on a mortgage for a very nice house, The Dude can't find a job, I HATE my new job, and P goes to a sub-standard daycare/school which manages to drain even more money that we don't have. Bills keep coming in, as they are wont to do, and I'm in constant amazement that we pay so much for not having much of anything quantifiable.

My job might give me a stroke, and on a calmer day I might evaluate how I can't yet decide whether the US workplace is shit overall, or if it's just my place of employment. I was lucky back in the UK - I loved the people I worked with, so I guess it's my turn to be in a work environment that is largely unbearable. Under ordinary circumstances, I genuinely love the field I'm in, but I now dread going to work every day. I sometimes sneak into the bathroom and cry, thinking about how I just want to be home with my baby. Those who know me know that this is *not* Pru-like behaviour, so there is obviously a glitch or 50 in the system somewhere.

We tell ourselves that we need just that "one thing" - a job for him, an offer on our flat in the UK, and then it would all start to be ok. We say that to one another when we are both doom and gloom, but I don't believe it, and I very much doubt The Dude does either.

There are P-related (future) school issues that are also being thrown at us, and I'm just so sick of thinking about it that I'll just skip over it here. When I'm back to being sane, if only for a moment, I have parent-of-a-near-5-year-old crap to bring up on the blog but I can't be arsed right now. Suffice it to say, it's so, so hard to not feel as if I have completely screwed her over in all of this. We moved over here to give her more, and she's living a pale imitation of her former life right now. It tears me apart thinking that I have consciously done this to her.

I try to recall that revisionist personal history is powerful. It makes you think that you were much happier before, that had you stayed in that life, everything would have been fine - peace in the status quo. Truth is, I know I wasn't happy before. I needed change, and I got it. Now I don't want it. I'm always discontent, there, here, everywhere. It doesn't matter. I don't know what I need to do in order to be happy, or if I can be. The DRAMA, I know.

So there it is. I know, it's just one of a hundred times I write these posts. I'll get over it, until the next time when I do it all over again. Don't feel obligated to indulge me by dispensing sage advice, just please, no one say that it could be worse. Things could always be worse - that doesn't make it better.

Why hello there

2011-01-04T02:56:00.002Z

My initial concern was that I wouldn't remember how to get to my blog, and even if I did - would I know how to log in and where to go once I was? I managed this after a couple of tries, then realized the larger problem would be whether I remember how to write. I'm concerned that until I get back into the swing of things (assuming I can manage to blog more than once every 6 months), I'll write in the self-conscious style that plagued my early posts. Reading my old posts you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled onto a 13 year old's diary, not the blog of someone in their late 20s talking about infertility. Late 20s...oh, those were the days.

So yes, I'm "back", though I never really left. I shifted my whole life and family back to the fair shores of the US and got lazy. Creating a new life for three is hard, let me tell you. I could pretend that I have no time, but I do. My kid (nearly 4 1/2 - SHIT) goes to bed at 7.30pm, I go to bed around 11pm every night. That is 3 1/2 hours of nothingness. Said nothingness is largely spent watching TV or DVDs with The Dude, catching up on what we have missed all these years away. Let me tell you - you people have got this reality TV thing down. Yes, it is "you people", because though I have lived in the US for three months and uh, I am American, I'm having some outsider issues which I hope will lessen soon.

My job is frustrating; it seems the notion of "training" is not important to the new place, yet haranguing me for not doing something I did not even know existed is acceptable. I am very independent and thorough, so this is not my chosen method in which to work. Professionally, I wouldn't want to do anything else, but I'm not sure if this is the institution for me. I am trying to be open-minded about it because I know it can take awhile to adjust, particularly when you come from a familiar, comfortable environment. I've been increasingly homesick for a country I am not even from, and on most days I debate whether I've done the right thing.

So here we are, dropped in an unfamiliar place, slowly getting our bearings. The Dude vacillates between thinking that the life we'll have here will be great once we sell our place in the UK and he finds a job, and OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? He has started doing some part-time coaching which has alleviated some of the overall pervasive misery, but neither one of us can help thinking about the two fairly good-paying jobs and property that we owned (god, I hate renting) and left behind.

P is just peachy regardless. She's happy here, she's happy there, she'd be happy in Eritrea. She is a jolly little bean, if not a jolly little dictating bean. See, I suppose not everything changes. We question our decision on her behalf as well, because even though she's well-adjusted, things could always be better. I wonder if anyone ever feels confident that their child(ren)have the very best life that they can provide. I didn't feel as if I was doing that in England, which was part of the reason for the move. Yet, I certainly don't feel as if I'm doing that here either. I don't know if that ideal space exists.

So yes, I am here. Disjointed, confused, stumbling blindly through life both real and cyber. My goal for this week is to read blogs, so watch yourselves. That is, if I can remember how to sign in and comment on them. Oh yeah, or if I'm not distracted by all of the quality reality television - damn you Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker!

Bon Voyage

2010-09-13T23:21:00.000+01:00

Four months of silence, yet I consistently don't know what to say when faced with a blank Blogger screen. The gist is this:

-I got a job in the US.
-I, and by which I mean only me, leave England after 8+ years on Wednesday. One day from now.
-I am terrified.
-I will be away from The Dude and P for two or three weeks, perhaps more.
-I have had one month to prepare for this and I have failed. Majorly.
-For the next few days I will mostly be crying and trying not to throw up repeatedly. This applies to repeatedly trying not to throw up, as well as possibly trying not to throw up repeatedly.
-This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I'm not sure what the next month will bring. I will try my best not to beseige this place with my misery whilst I'm trying to sort out my new life over there alone.

Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. Wank.

Maman

2010-05-02T22:47:00.000+01:00

When I was pregnant, I finally began to realise the weight attached to my own notion of motherhood. I never perceived myself to be the maternal type, and my relationship with my own mother, though loving, has some element of distance because we are two very different people. I have never been particularly fond of children, and even with one of my own, maintain a withdrawn, wary stance when it comes to the children of others. Since I had P, I suppose my Mom and I have grown closer, though I do feel as if my general emotional reservedness is at odds with her outgoing, emotionally bold personality.

My Mom lost her mother when I, her first child, was not yet a year old. Growing up, I knew how profoundly her loss affected her - she was apologetic that I never knew my grandmother, and her mourning was two-fold now that she too had a daughter. I didn't think much about the daughter-mother-grandmother link until I was trying to get pregnant and had a dreadful nightmare that my Mom died right after I had a daughter of my own. I was lost as she had been, struggling to come to terms with new motherhood and grief simultaneously. It was a strange, lingering dream which annoyingly elbowed its way into my waking life and provided a very odd world for me mentally for quite some time afterwards.

Since I had P, I haven't lingered on that dream much. I can't. As most of you know, I have some issues with anxiety, so the further away those thoughts, the better. My worry is often allocated entirely to P, and there is so much of it, there is not often much spare. This afternoon my brother called to say that my Mom took herself to the ER early this morning because she was having heart palpitations. Because "rational" is not a word often associated with my mental processes, I have been going to extremes all day. My brother has not seemed overly concerned, but then again, he's male, and I'm 4000 miles away and helpless. He often downplays all of my Dad's forays into alcoholic idiocy, so I know he's worried too and just masking it well.

Being a negative person and extreme worrier, this only goes one way with me. Even if it's nothing this time, it has awakened an alarm within me so that from now until someone actually dies, I will think every phone call is bad news. I know it sounds horribly melodramatic and an exaggeration, but this is how my mind works. It has always latched on to one occasion where something went wrong, and thus every other time the same situation presents itself, I assume it to be bad. Once The Dude had head pain so severe that I rushed him to the ER, with me believing he was surely experiencing an aneurysm and would die before we got there. Instead, he was 26 when he discovered he inherited his mother's tendency to debilitating migraines. Nonetheless, with every twinge, every need to take an Excedrin, it's 11 years ago again and I'm bracing myself for the worst.

Since my brother phoned, I have been catastrophizing. That's what us anxious people do, and who am I to disappoint? I am now starkly aware of my Mom's mortality, and cannot think of anything else. I think of it in terms of her being my own mother of course, but also her presence as the Granny P adores. I could be a mother defining my own mother to my child in purely anecdotal terms one day - soon? - just as she was 25 years ago. My mind then goes further, just to fuck with me even more, to remind me that as I'm trying to get pregnant again, I have possible dead-grandmother emotional baggage for that hypothetical child as well. Yes, yes, I know it all sounds so absurd, and to be honest typing it makes me feel a bit ridiculous. Regretfully, rational thought does not mix well with catastrophizing.

My Mom rang about an hour ago, scaring the shit out of me as that blessed ring will do from now on. She wanted to tell me that all was ok, "so you'll sleep well tonight." Ha! She's in a difficult place - other than being more or less on her own to deal with this, she has to concern herself with my fragile mental state. She knows how I am. She often brings up the many times in my childhood when I would be too anxious to sleep and she had to stroke my hair and talk about our "peaceful place." Apparently her issue (something about a sinus which I WILL NOT Google, or I shall never sleep again) can be treated by something as simple as medication, or at its most invasive extreme, a pacemaker.

Strangely enough, there was a line that had been bouncing around in my head all week, one which I read somewhere - I'm paraphrasing, but basically, the important things that change your life are the ones which happen in a second. We tend to ascribe all the gravity of our lives to the things we ponder over and over again - do I move back to the US? Do I greet infertility again to see if I can try my luck again? - rather than the ones which can change it all in an instant.

I was in an awkward mental place prior to all of this anyway, so it's only natural that the weirdness should be extended a bit longer. I guess it's a combination of PMS (because OF COURSE my period is impending), and general mental imbalance, but I have been near tears or tearful for the past 48 hours. Now I guess I at least have a good reason to be so. I'm so paranoid, another fun aspect of my uh, issues, that I picture people reading this and rolling their eyes. Many of you have lost your mothers, or had mothers with issues more severe than what appears to be a rather harmless condition as far as heart things go, and here I am, rabbitting on like the most overreacting-nest person who ever overreacted. If anyone would like to talk me down off the ledge, you are more than welcome to do so.

Music Monday: It's About Damn Time

2010-04-25T20:35:00.006+01:00

I don't even know how long it has been since I did MM. I could look, but that requires effort and I'm fresh out of that. As I tweeted yesterday, my kid is being an absolute gobshite lately and a bit of a cow, so I feel capable of little other than dribbling on myself, staring forelornly into middle distance, and oh - hooking you up with some music.

Dave Rawlings Machine: To Be Young

Josh Ritter: Change of Time (frick on a stick I wanted to not like him or this song given my brother's worrying it-puts-the-lotion-on-the-skin love of all things Ritter)

She and Him: Ridin' in My Car (I like this quite a bit despite my abiding hatred of M Ward)

Beach House: Zebra

The Bird and the Bee: I Can't Go For That

Broken Bells: The High Road

Monsters of Folk: Dear God

Dawes: When My Time Comes

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: 40 Day Dream

Cold War Kids: Audience

Mumford and Sons: The Cave (there are other songs I could choose from this wonderful band, however, I love this song so much I hae every faith that if I listen to it a thousand times, I will get the job I want and become infinitely fertile. It will be so.)

I hope to be back later in the week with an honest to god blog post about real stuff. We shall see.

Huzzah

2010-03-30T20:05:00.003+01:00

Heyyyy-oooooo! I've swept away the cobwebs and stomped on the spiders inhabiting this space. They will surely take up residence again when I've left this to rot for another few months. So, ignore the tumbleweeds, but don't get too excited and think that I have much of note to say.

Where have I been...yes, where have I been. I have been trying to get pregnant in the UK or employed in the US, consistently failed, had mini-breakdowns, resolved to smite my ovaries because they are bastards, cursed US higher education institutions for being close-minded (or perhaps just exhibiting good sense), adoring my magnificent daughter, resuming my MA in Art History, consequently not getting enough sleep, shunning blogging in favour of the ease and lack of commitment of Facebook, and not running enough. I think that about covers it.

Since I last blogged in January, I made some decisions. As alluded to above, I decided to give equal effort to the two things I want - a second child and a job in the US. Neither one of those options seem too keen to get things moving, but at least I am attempting to take action so that something will hopefully happen. Eventually. I bought myself one of those nifty Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitors that does all the hard work for me, because I tried the temp thing the first go round and it was all a bit much of a to-do. I barely even know what day it is or where I'm supposed to be, I'm sure as hell not put together enough to taking my temp before my eyes even open and then drafting it on a damn chart.

I'll tell you something else - I always said that I was a completely rubbish infertile, and you'll be pleased to know that is still the case. I never used OPKs before now, and I have no idea what the lines on the wee sticks even mean. No clue. I hold them up to the light every morning, trying to glean what knowledge exactly, I have no idea. I angle them against the skylight, squint, furrow my brow, draw no conclusions whatsoever, and put them in the bin. Thank god the little machine tells me my business or else I'd have no clue. The penis goes where?

I have been trying not to think about what happens after failure. I have very quickly fallen back into the mentality that pregnancy is something which happens to other people rather than me. I may have been pregnant before, but like a lot of things, the passage of time wears away memories slowly. I can barely remember that time with any accuracy, and though the evidence of my successful pregnancy is constantly smacking my ass and saying "Hey sugarbum" with a flawless Southern accent, I seem to disassociate her with the actual process of being pregnant.

Between cycles I don't much care which comes first - pregnancy or job. After a failed cycle, well, woebetide the poor Dude, who is relegated to a support position which largely involves staring blankly at me while I rage. Ah, the good old days, eh?

So yes, I'm back in this IF sphere again, begrudgingly. I might even stick around for a bit. Who am I kidding? I'll be here for years. I hope to put off the fun stuff like wandings and flashing my doctor for at least a little while, but I'll need somewhere to vent the reality. Facebook is crawling with work folk, family, and severe Christ-worshippers who would fall of their pews if they knew what I'm really like. I need this blog for that, as short of personal emails, this is still the only place where I can be me.

Simplification

2010-01-17T18:28:00.004Z

Though I may not be blogging much lately, I am doing a lot of thinking, if that counts for anything. In the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get my (metaphorical) house in order, though, like all the other times, it will all soon fall apart. Again.

Anyway, while I was away, thinking and pondering, pondering and thinking - my FIVE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY passed. Five damn years. Not only does this mean that I have been writing this claptrap for that amount of time, but that I've known my Cheese Wife for pretty much that long. There we were, but babes in the infertile wood, and he we are five years later, both with drastically different lives. I'm thankful that there are more of you out there that I have known for just about as long, and happy that we're all still around in some capacity - whether it is still in blog form, email, or Facebook. I scoff in the general direction of all those who say you cannot form "proper" relationships in cyberspace. Do people even say "cyberspace" anymore?

The wheels in my wee head have been turning, consumed with thoughts of my own personal evolution as a blogger. No doubt Mel would write about this subject (and probably has) far better than I can, but I'm just going to go and talk about it anyway.

Within the last year, if not a bit more, my perspective on blogging has changed quite drastically. In the time before, I was perhaps a bit too consumed with trying to plump up my traffic, increase my profile, and befriend big(ish) names. I was never too ambitious, as I think a lot of the bloggers classified as A-list are not very good writers and/or entertaining and wouldn't sell myself just for the sake of squealing when one linked to me (she says, mentioning good writing after that awkward sentence). I was never so crass as to be obvious about it; I just cannot starfuck without feeling like a dirty, dirty whore.

I don't know why I wanted more readers. I'm too much of a flake to handle the online friendships I have now, so I can't imagine, at least not conciously, that I wanted to make more friends. Perhaps it's a tiny amount of that basic, high school-ish desire to hang out with those that are considered the cool kids. For the most part, that isn't what it was about for me, since I didn't much care for that rubbish when I was in high school. Admittedly, there are some bloggers that are popular and that I think are downright fabulous, and even now in my devil-may-care phase, I'd be lying if I said I didn't secretly want them to read me, just once. Luckily, one of them, the aforementioned, almighty Mel, does pop in every once in awhile, and heck, I think she even likes me!

I have always enjoyed receiving comments, as we all do, and I've always drawn a parallel (at least on my own blog)with good writing yielding a higher number of comments. Of course we know that isn't strictly true, as I have been to some truly dire blogs with dozens of comments, but I judge my own blog differently for some reason. I think we've all been in a position in which we have written a post we are really proud of, or is particularly heartfelt, but draws very little response. I like writing, and since I don't do that in an academic setting at the moment (though this is to change in a few weeks' time), it's nice to have occasional feedback, however informal.

So yes, maybe it's the Citalopram setting my head right, perhaps it's because I'm an old lady now at 31 and will find joy in things like cats and pensions instead of blog popularity. It's not an issue of not enjoying my blog anymore - I can't invisage giving it up anytime soon, but I can't be bothered with all of the politics and preening. I'm going to go simple and just blog for blogging's sake. I'm going to keep on (trying) to read the same blogs I've known and loved for years, and not add any with the view of trying to garner new readers. I applaud those of you who have been that way since you started, clearly you're higher up the blogging evolutionary chain.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go dig out the raisin I've just dropped in my cleavage, then commence with the burning of patchouli and listening to the Grateful Dead.

Music Wednesday: Merry Christmas you bastards!

2009-12-24T14:11:00.005Z

Yeah, ok, so I didn't quite manage to write this post for Sunday or Monday as promised, but such is my flakyness. Regardless, it's here now, with your requests as well as my own favourites.

May @Problem Uterus suggested Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and Barenaked Ladies' "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen":

I don't care what anyone says, Christmas isn't Christmas without a little Bing.

Little Drummer Boy (with David Bowie)

White Christmas

My new sister in Mid-Atlantic statedom, Cali, wanted Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon (I'm assuming, rather than the Celine version) and "Christmas Time is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Since we don't get that 1964 jem "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the UK, I must rely on YouTube for my annual fix. Hurray for "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold":

Eliza's Mom, always the musical brainiac has suggested The Killers' "Don't Shoot Me Santa", and yes, EM, they are wearing some pretty vile/fabulous Christmas sweaters! Her other recommendation, because she pretty much rocks, is Porn Orchard's "Christmas Sucks":

And because I'm a big old dirty hippie who loves folk music, here is Kate Rusby's version of "Here We Come a Wassailing":

I could go on and on, because despite my gruff, cynical exterior, I love Christmas and all its pageantry, with Christmas music ranking right up there in my all-time list of favourite things. I won't project my holiday love any more, except to leave you with what is obviously the best contemporary Christmas song I know, and Major Bedhead and Molly agree with me - "Fairytale of New York", by the late, great Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues. Cover versions follow, just for fun:

Billy Bragg and Florence and the Machine

Paloma Faith ft Scouting for Girls

KT Tunstall ft Ed Harcourt

Martha Wainwright & Ed Harcourt

Happy Holidays to you all!

Not so musical Monday

2009-12-14T22:13:00.005Z

At 10pm I sat down for the first time since I got home at 5.30pm. I did manage to eat dinner in that time, a rather delicious Katsu curry I started making as soon as I got in. Regretfully, my dinner consumption usually takes about 40 minutes and involves minimal sitting. Instead it's grabbing a bite here and there when not being moaned at by the Tiny Dictator that her belly is rumbling, but somehow it knows it's not hungry for dinner but sweets. Arguments ensue, I'm told that I'm not very nice and have thus lost the friendship of my only daughter for being so bold as to ask her to eat her dinner.

After preparation of two lunches (tuna sandwich for me, homemade cheesy pasta with tuna for her), two lots of dish washing later with a quick tidy of the kitchen, and it's 10pm. The Dude was insistent that I should go to bed and watch an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" with him, but who wants to go from work - kitchen - bed - work with no proper relaxing in between? Now he is relegated to the bedroom and I get to cosy up with the laptop and a new (to us poor UK residents anyway) episode of SVU. I'll go to bed at 11pm anyway, but somehow that extra hour of alone time will hopefully be enough so I don't wake up tomorrow with a major case of the post-Mondays.

This is such a stupid Mommy blogger thing to say, but fuck it - what do you do to not feel as if your life is just one endless cycle of things that wear you out? I just cannot physically find the time to do things I need to do - Christmas cards for example. When? I suppose I could take a few hours one night and work on them, but at the risk that everything else would fall behind. I bring work home with me most nights, but I rarely get a chance to sit down and do it. Dinners and lunches need made, kitchens need to be cleaned, dishes need done, toys need to be picked up.

Somehow I don't feel stressed out with the hectic nature of the moment, I'm just tired. I can't believe I used to have time to sit down and write here two or three times a week, let alone reading what other people are writing. I can't work out what was different then, as I have the same job, same kid, same husband doing the same job. When are things not like this anymore? Retirement? Jesus...

Jumping subjects entirely, I'll be doing a Music Monday next week (21st) featuring holiday music. I have some ideas of my own, but want some other recommendations. What songs put you in the holiday mood? Email me before next Sunday, barrenalbion at gmail dot com, or leave a comment here.

I'm going to go put my favourite Christmas sweater on and brainstorm.

Vignettes of a trip abroad

2009-12-02T22:26:00.002Z

The jig is up. I haven't blogged in fifty years, so if you are unfortunate enough to remember who I am, you probably don't even remember my allusions to a secret. The secret is, I flew to the US a couple of weeks ago for a real, live job interview. I *still* haven't heard whether I got the damn thing or not, though I suspect much like the magic period that turns up right when I waste urine and a tenner on a pregnancy test, I'll get an email right after I hit publish. Before you ask - I have no idea how I did. I am confident in how I presented myself in the four hours of various kinds of interviews I've had with my hopeful employers-to-be at anonymous university outside Philly, but you can never predict such outcomes, can you?

I was only in the States for a few days, but sans The Baggage, I managed to squeeze more into that period than I usually do in a month-long trip. I have a cluster of trip tidbits that I wanted to mention, so I'll just dispense of proper grammar and paragraph structure and just list things numerically. I may have disappeared from blogging for a bit, but worry not, my laziness remains intact.

1) On the flight to the States, I watched three films - The Time Traveller's Wife, The Ugly Truth, and a third which I have just now forgotten. Regardless, I have a lesson for you. If you have just left your family for the first time ever having only been away from your child for a maximum of 9 hours, DO NOT watch The Time Traveller's Wife. If you do, you will sit snivelling like an idiot, wiping your nose on the airline-provided blanket, ignoring the sidewards glances of the guy seated on the other side of the aisle, with your finger hovering over the "stop" button in case it all gets to be too much. I read the book and know it's a bit draining, so how I managed to not transfer this knowledge to my film decision making, I don't know.

2) The night I arrived I met the wonderful, glorious, hospitable, gorgeous Tash. I've neglected to meet up with her on past trips, and though we did not get to an XPN event, I greatly enjoyed the limited time I spent with her. I'm still paranoid that she probably felt I was way too comfortable, as I pretty much helped myself to her computer, drank her tea, and got all cosy in her kitchen. The lovely woman pretended I wasn't the rudest person in the world, and in my defense jet lag messes with my head a bit. My sense of tact which is always present starts to dissipate in fairly large increments once I've been awake for more than 18 hours. Tash's house is quite possibly, nay, IS, the most beautiful residence I have ever set foot in. I offered to move in straight away, and Tash gracefully deflected the offer and moved on to another matter quite quickly. We even hugged before I left, and let me tell you, I'm not much of a hugger so that Tash is one lucky broad.

3) My Kindle, which does not have 3G access when in the UK, enabled me to sit at lunch the next day and download books. It will take me years to get over the marvel of being able to sit on your toilet (if you so desire), order a book, and start reading it 30 seconds later. Unfortunately for constructiveness and my marriage, I downloaded Dragonfly in Amber. I've gushed about this series (Outlander) before, and just like the first book, I cannot.get.enough. I don't know what it is, because some of it is hokey as hell and the sex scenes just make me laugh, but they are so addictive. That, and I desperately want to have lots of The Sex with Jamie. It's weird to lust after a fictional literary character. I spend way too much time brainstorming about who would best suit Jamie in a film version, then pleading desperately with fate to actually make a film version. I don't think I'd be able to watch it, lest I suffer from some sort of death by rapid orgasm and expire in a public movie theater.

4) American rest stops. I love them. I don't know what it is, and maybe I've been away too long so as to find such ordinariness compelling, but I could sit in one for hours. I stopped in a wee one on the PA Turnpike to get a coffee, and my eyes couldn't dart around quick enough to take all the American goodness in. I think it's just such a symbol of Americana, with so many different types of people moving in and out with such rapidity. There's something so old school and mid-20th century about it.

5) I met someone else on my trip - see, I told you I was industrious! Guess who? She lives out Philly way, sassy as hell, and has been a blogging friend of mine since her first infertility blog when she called herself "Holly". It's STATIA! Let me just say, I'm the first one to admit that my real self is not nearly as outgoing and bold as my blog self, but Statia is the real deal. Blog Statia is real Statia. Bitch. We met for coffee in a great little coffeeshop round her way, and she even paid for my drink. She's a classy broad, that one. The best part is, even though I was dressed like a common post-interview streetwalker, she didn't even ask to cop a feel before she bought my drink. So well-mannered. Much like my time with Tash, my visit with Statia was hours upon hours too short, but we crammed in a lot of talking into not much time. I'm endlessly pleased that I bothered to fit her in this time, even if it was mainly to shut her up about my apparent constant dissing of her when Stateside. I loved that we were able to keep the antagonistic banter up in real life, as if we'd known each other for years. Oh wait. We have.

I'm sure there is more to my trip that would involve tales of my Mom's alleged ghost, by which I mean one which haunts my Mom's house, not the ghost of my still-alive Mom (who is here in the UK as we speak), Aunt Florence's recent begging episode, my mental insistence that if I get this job I should reward myself with a slew of art, and my annoyance with my home city that it is now cool - despite not being remotely so when I actually lived there.

My goal in life now is not to get this job, but rather to read some goddamned blogs. I miss blog-reading, but my life in the past six months has been entirely composed of visa paperwork, job searching, job applications, resume and cover letter modification, email correspondence with job folk, child rearing, home maintenance, work stuff, and a touch of animal husbandry. I can't wait until I have a series of evenings in which I can sit on my ass and read blogs. It would be like a dream come true.

Music Monday: In with the new

2009-11-16T20:10:00.004Z

It's been awhile since I've gotten my shit together enough to do this. I regularly send myself emails with band names and song titles in the hopes that one day I'll put it all together for an MM post. Hey - what do you know...today is that day!

Choir of Young Believers: Next Summer

Raul Malo: Every Little Thing About You

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros: Home

Fanfarlo: The Walls are Coming Down

Imogen Heap: First Train Home

Editors: No Sound But the Wind (this one is for you Rachel!)
-Also, has anyone seen how friggin' good the New Moon OST is? Damn.

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Florence & the Machine: Raise it Up

Ellie Goulding: Under the Sheets

I hope that keeps you busy for awhile. Check some of these out, even if you usually skim by my MM posts. There's some good stuff in there!

Next post - the news? Who knows? Not I...

You've got a ... friend?

2009-11-08T21:02:00.003Z

Here it is - I'm a shit friend. I'm a shit friend in real life, and I'm shit in the virtual one. In my head I try, but when it comes right down to it, I'm lazy and far too scatterbrained to maintain the sense of dedication and loyalty that is required in friendship.

I'm sure one or two of you will emerge from the shadows to refute this to spare my feelings, but don't bother. We both know that you've sent me lengthy and important emails that I've either taken a year to respond to, or never bothered to at all. In some cases, you've been worried about me and enquired to others as to my whereabouts, concerned that one of my morose posts has lead to my self-imposed exile from society. The kicker is - I know about this worry and STILL don't take two minutes to let you know that I have not done a swan dive out my third story window. I am that filled with disregard it seems.

Don't worry, it's not the sheltered, hidden nature of the internet that encourages me. I've always been like this. When I was 19 and was going to college in my hometown, one of my best friends who moved away to a college a few states away came back to visit and never called me. I was offended, until she pointed out that I never really responded to her repeated emails, so she didn't bother contacting me. Fair enough. Eventually I made it up to her by emailing regularly, if only for a little while. Ironically, we find ourselves in this same awkward position these days - we're Facebook friends due to our 20 year history, but she ignores every attempt I make at contact. I get it, I've been fired. I've sacked others before, now it's my turn to be on the other side.

My family always trades tales of my complete inability to maintain any type of correspondence relationship. As you may imagine, moving 4000 miles away has not helped matters. I read the emails they send, then when I fail to respond, tell them months later that life was just so hectic, blah blah blah. Yes, my life is a touch busy, but no more so than anyone else's. I work full-time and have a kid. So do millions of other people. Not only do those people manage to do degrees, take tae kwon do, and cook delicious dinners, but they also email their friends every once in awhile in order to maintain long-standing relationships.

I do feel terrible about it all, though apparently not bad enough to modify my behaviour. I go through bouts of talking a big game, pretending that I'm on top of life enough to make more of an effort, but progress is fleeting. It's upsetting enough doing this via emails and phone calls, but I'm also dreadful at sending post as well. Birthday cards? Maybe, and most likely to be a month or so after your actual birthday. Present for the new baby? Ok. It will be for your toddler and not so much a newborn, but I'll get around to it. Eventually.

I do wonder what all of this says about me. In my head, I'm a good person. The Dude is forever telling me that I shouldn't think of other people so much, or be so generous. How these traits co-exist with my complete inability to not be an inconsiderate shithead, I have no idea. I think perhaps it's because it's all theoretical with me. I do feel horribly/fantastically about your difficult/joyous time. It will probably depress/elate me by association, and I'll tell The Dude how very sad/happy I am for you. The glitch, the immense stumbling block of insurmountable adversity, seems to be my ability to tell you that I feel that way. Even if I manage to get that out of me, there will be no ongoing dialogue, because I'll just leave it at that. The intent to do otherwise will be there, but....

I could go on and on with a lengthy list of those I've wronged in this way. I see your names every single time I look at my mounting unread feeds, and I'm sorry. I do wonder what I do to deserve such loyalty, as my inability to comment on your blogs and reply to your emails is not commensurate to your dedication to me. I apologise the use of "dedication", but other than the even scarier cult-like word of "devotion", I can't think of an appropriate, much more mild word.

So, to all of you, mea culpa. I'm not going to pretend things are going to change, because they won't. Well, when I put it like that I sound like a prize asshole, which is perhaps the whole point. Anyway, I am sorry. I would love to be an attentive, ever-thoughtful friend, but I don't think that is how I'll ever be, regardless of how much I want it.

Lest anyone think this reads like a suicide note, particularly bearing in mind my recent hysterical posts, don't worry. This is something that is always on the tip of my fingers waiting to be unleashed. In actuality, some good news has shined on these shores. Possibly. A bit early to say, but all will be evident in the next couple of weeks either way. Regardless of the outcome, you can then send me your usual fabulously supportive messages, and I will then not respond. That's just my way.

Subtext

2009-10-28T07:25:00.002Z

I left something out last night in writing my miserablist post, for good reason. I got in my head that I could be pregnant, so I had the added pressure of the test-or-not-to-test situation. Being cynical old me, despite the physical signs which were to the letter echoed in a post by a newly pregnant blogger, I already anticipated a negative.

Life is never to fail in its disappointment, so when I tested this morning, I was met with a rather forceful "Not pregnant" on the pg test screen. Whose bright idea was it to get something which puts my failure into words for me? As if the lack of a second line isn't enough, I need the cruel truth glaring at me in text form.

The three of you who are still following my blogshite will know that this is the only month that we have been trying as such. Can you imagine the luxury and bold taunting of fate which would be involved in a natural conception within the first month of trying? Haha! Clearly one of the side effects of Celexa is delusions.

My issues with a prospective pregnancy are manifold, but the gist is this - failure is the story of my life right now. Can't get a job? Check. Can't reproduce? Check. Can't manage to get your husband a Visa because you are either a fucktard or don't make enough money or possibly a fucktard who doesn't make enough money? Check. I know it's my hypersensitivity talking, but when things are shit, it seems its opposites slap you in the face everyday. Other people are getting jobs in the fields they want; my absolutely clueless manager maintains her job easily, thus depriving me of a position that may actually get me the jobs I'm trying to get; others' fecundity is suddenly very obvious to me again, just like the old days.

I've posted before about how proud I was to have left Infertile Bitter Old Crone territory, but I've found myself swiftly back in there, after ONE MONTH. I guess my departure from the club was only ever going to be temporary. You think you have it bad having to read all of my moaning - pity The Dude. He has to put up with me moping, crying, and being all woe is me day in and day out. Oy.

I've saved another aspect of my immense daily failures for another post - friendships and consideration for other bloggers. That post will feature tumbleweeds rolling by, as the whole point of the post will be how I totally suck at supporting other people, and a byproduct of this failure is that the smart ones aren't bothered with me anymore anyway.

Jesus - THE MISERY. Is 7.45am too early for a non-drinker to start on the hard stuff? Insert your eyerolls here; I sooooo deserve it.

Sangry

2009-10-27T20:20:00.003Z

In my brief blogging absence, I've been pondering what to write about. Some good ideas have occasionally popped up, though the stumbling block seems to arise when it comes to actually writing. It's a step that is difficult to skip in blogging. As soon as Google finds away around that, I am so signing up for the Beta.

I still have those ideas rolling about my head, waiting for me to have an evening in which I sit down with the laptop and want to do more than haunting gossip websites. However, I was forced out of hiding by BlogHer, who threatens to do my kneecaps if I go two weeks without posting. I need that extra $25/year, so here I am.

As those I interact with on Twitter will know, this past weekend sucked ever so slightly. I had to call an ambulance for The Dude on Saturday night, Sunday morning P woke up vomiting, and yesterday the American Embassy bent me over a table like I wasn't even one of their own. FYI - apparently having funds more than 10 times the poverty guidelines is not sufficient a financial basis to start over in the US. Now you know.

Strangely enough, I'm more scarred by the Embassy experience (which I wasn't even present for) than The Dude being carted off to the hospital with chest pains. That right there is at least 8 kinds of fucked up. In case you're wondering, The Dude is fine and was fortunate enough to experience esophageal spasms rather than a heart attack. It's all good in the hood now.

I'd like to recount my discussion with the 999 dispatcher for interested parties, as you couldn't make this shit up:

Her: Could I have your postcode please?

Me: Yes, it's SE4 0YU (not really, but let's pretend it is)

Her: Hmm. No address is coming up. Are you sure this is the postcode?

Me: Quite. ::spells it again using NATO phonetic alphabet::

Her: Yes, that's what I'm typing luv. It's not coming up. Are you sure dear??

Me: Very. ::provides AND spells full address::

Her: It's not here luv, at all. Is it a new-build?

Me: No, it's an old building. Not much around here is a new-build.

Her: Luv, there is absolutely no record of this building on our system. At all. Don't take this the wrong way dear, but - go and get a bill and repeat to me the address listed exactly as it is on the bill. Can you do that dear?

Me: ::first checking that The Dude was not yet dead after all this nonsense::
Ma'am, I don't mean to be disrespectful, as I appreciate you're doing your job, but I can assure you that as a literate person residing at this residence for 6 years, I am supremely confident that my address is exactly as I have recounted to you.

Her: Ok then luv. I know you're not trying to be difficult. OH! Here it is! It was in the system wrong! Hur hur! Now, about that ambulance...

How is that for a story to tell the grandkids?

When The Dude rang me from the Embassy to tell me of the fuckery surrounding his Visa, I cried and yelled into the phone. No, really. Bear in mind that his Visa has been approved pending the submission of suitable financial sponsorship, but I have spent hours and hours gathering all of this information for them to look at it for 2 minutes and say it's not sufficient. I was so enraged I couldn't even talk to my Cheese Wife last night, as if just by being American it's her fault the Embassy told me my ass was too broke to sponsor my alien husband. Bastards.

I would like a good rest of the week please - I don't know what that entails, but I'd prefer a lack of ambulances, vomit, and bureaucracy if at all possible.

Small, small world

2009-10-08T22:16:00.002+01:00

I must tear myself away from obsessively watching the 12 photo slideshow of my dream house which I discovered on my lunch hour today, so in an effort to divert my attention, I thought I'd talk about small world-ism.

The world is a massive place, stuffed wih billions of people. Yet, in my 31 years I've encountered quite a few small world-isms, and heard some from others which make me feel as if the world's population must be rather overestimated. That, and perhaps the world, like my ass, is flat.

My first run in with small world-ism didn't actually involve me, not directly anyway. My uncle was a cop in downtown D.C., and pulled over a man who made an illegal left turn. Upon inspecting the man's driver's license, my uncle noticed that he was from Harrisburg, PA, hometown of amazing, witty, and charming folk. They got to talking, as it transpires, the illegal turner was our family dentist. Of all the cops in DC, he chose to make a wrong turn in front of my uncle.

The other day, again, on my lunch hour, I had a random look at a work-related email that I would usually delete. A name on a spreadsheet attached to the email caught my eye, as it was a unique one that matched that of a girl with whom I went to high school. I do some grade-A stalker googling, and it turns out, this girl, now presumably a woman, is in fact from my dinky wee high school near the capital of PA. She wandered out of our small town, got her PhD from a university down the road from me here in the UK, and is now registered at my university. It would be weird to meet another Pennsylvanian here, let alone an acquaintance from my own high school.

I've saved the best for last, and as it involves a blogger, you simply must pay attention. Soon after I started blogging, I was waxing unlyrical about my life here in the UK. One of my most very favourite bloggers ever, AmyEsq (Amy or those associated with her, if you read this, please tell me if/where you're blogging now - I've had a brain lapse), commented that she was pretty sure she was familiar with one of my photos, that of a pier. We exchanged some emails on the subject, and as it happens, Amy's husband, a young British guy of surely dazzling intellect, went to university in my UK seaside town. The university I slave for. As a matter of fact, he was a student of my department, with lectures in my building! Tell me, does it get more small world-ish than that?

I'm not trying to increase audience participation, but I would like to know of your small world-isms. That way when I'm at a party and can think of nothing to say, I can label you as "my friend" so that I can recount your tale and others can gasp in astonishment at its wonder.

Music Monday: Running Music II

2009-10-05T20:54:00.004+01:00

My brother, kind music-loving soul that he is, recently made me a running CD. It's just as well, as my current one is stale, to say the least. With C's contribution, I'm up to 62 songs.

Ladies, I bring you, "SWD is the WMD". SWD - that's me, that is.

Radiohead: Bodysnatchers

Moby: Extreme Ways (sorry about the shoddy video - all others had been disabled)

Ludacris: Get Back (My current foul-mouthed favourite. Those with sensitive ears and more sensitive sensibilities are best off avoiding this one)

Elbow: Grounds for Divorce

Rage Against the Machine: Guerilla Radio

The Killers: Jenny Was a Friend of Mine

MGMT: Kids

Incubus: Megalomaniac

Lupe Fiasco: Pressure

The Roots: Rising Down

Ben Harper and Relentless 7: Shimmer and Shine

N.E.R.D: Thrasher

Drained

2009-09-29T21:22:00.002+01:00

For once I am inspired to write, but my energy levels are not complying. It's my ridiculously busy time of year, and today was my first full work day in my office in over two weeks. I've been flitting about, rushing here and there, and once at home doing the same thing until Bossy Boots goes to sleep at 8-8.30pm every night. Wah, wah, wah.

This is a bit of a waste of a post, as it's largely going to consist of me moaning about shit, sorry. I am apparently just about ready to start my period you'll be pleased to know, which means I am in total insane snappy lady mode much to The Dude's immense and all-consuming joy.

My first pet peeve may seem random - mail order brides. Ok, that probably isn't very PC anymore, but I'm sorry, that's what they are. You can call it what you want, it's still buying a woman and trapping her in a life of domesticity and breeding so your nasty old ass can bang some young hot thing. In exchange, she gets to live in England, and...and...something. I am pretty confident that I live in the mail order bride capital of England, as I see mail order brides and their crusty husbands on most days.

I'm sure these women left dreadful lives behind, but they come to the UK and endure endentured servitude for the privilege of residing in the UK. Is it worth it? The Dude's family, acquainted with men who have bought women, see it from a very live and let live perspective. They view it as saving a poor soul who would otherwise be living in a shanty town, occasionally gathering rubbish to trade in for a few cents. Here, they get the glory of living in a council flat with some old bloke who couldn't find a woman to marry without cash exchanging hands. Bliss!

2) Men who grab or scratch their junk in my presence. Dude, I would balk at my husband doing that when we're hanging out at home watching The Office - do not DARE stand in front of my desk and adjust yourself. I do not want to think of your twig and berries at all, and I certainly don't need to be reminded that they sometimes itch or need shifted. For some reason, Middle Eastern students do this all the time and I so want to kick them out of the office. However, at the heart of things I'm just a dainty little mouse and would fear the confrontation. Shame, since I could do with out the junk shaking.

3) Sidewalk hogs. I get that you want to walk alongside your friends, but if someone is trying to run or walk by you, get out the way! Three of you do not need to walk next to each other at all times so that I must pick up my child and walk into the street to bypass you. Also, if I am running toward you, please, just walk single file for a moment so I am again not forced into the street. Not too long ago I shouted at some old dears for not budging an inch when I tried to run by them. Gone was that reserve mentioned in number 2 - it must have been period time then as well. Stupid old cows.

4) The constant assault on working MOTHERS by the media. Working parents are not a problem, just a mother. I know this subject only affects a smattering of you, but I'm blogging about it when I get my brain and energy back, so prepare yourselves. Or as I typed originally, "yourselfs". See what I mean?

5) Loud talkers. Shut the fuck up - no one cares about what you're saying nearly as much as you do. There is a person in a position of power at work who barges in our quiet, constructive office and announces her arrival like she's on some red carpet. Get over yourself.

6) Periods. Harbingers of doom. Signifier of barren wombs and bad attitudes. Cramps. Crying because your husband decides to do us all a favour and go grocery shopping before he collects you from work rather than after when he knows you'll be tired. No, not grateful tears, angry tears because you wanted to pick out your own hummus.

7) The evil age of 3 - P is hilarious, amazing, and clever. However, the tantrums and smart assery of this age, jesus chrysler it's hard work. This kid, after being reprimanded for being dreadful, says things like, "I've had a horrible day because you and Daddy were cross with me" and "I don't like you very much right now Mum, and I don't want to be your friend because you shout at me." We are only cross with her when she deserves it, and I am not a shouter unless she's running onto oncoming traffic. This is not to mention the screaming, dear god, the SCREAMING. Four is good, right? Right?

8) The sun. It's autumn in England (actually, is it officially?) but the sun shines every damn day and it's still 20 degrees Celcius. Every day. You could roast a chicken on a spit in my stupid office and it's insufferable. Unlike my Cheese Wife, I cannot tolerate the sun. I hate the thing. Give me a cloudy and cold day over a sunny hot one any day of the week. Lordy, I am so goth.

Phew. I feel better now. Apologies for the absolute rambling nature of this post. Once my head is back I'll try to do a post good and proper. I think. Maybe.

Girls' Day Out

2009-09-22T21:16:00.003+01:00

Due to a school closure, P and I had long-planned today's Girls' Day Out. When originally asked what she wanted from the day, all I got from P was, "I want to do some playing." Really kid? Playing? You don't say! What else do three year olds do but eat, sleep and play?

We crammed a lot into our time; bus rides, the park, lunch, shopping for cheap tat jewellery at Claire's and a bucket of dinosaurs from the toy shop, a viewing of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and a gourmet cupcake purchase for The Dude. She selected one with bright pink frosting, rightly assuming that the colour would please him greatly.

I am utterly, all-consumingly shattered right now, but high on the fact that I have a daughter I can do these things with. I'm not much of a girly-girl, ok, other than my fancy shoe and Johnny Depp fixation I'm really not at all a girly-girl, but I love visions of lunching and shopping with P - two girls out on the town.

I am rather sentimental about it all at the moment anyway, so pardon me for sounding like the classic working Mom, proud of the fact that she's spent ONE WHOLE DAY with her child alone. A colleague recently lost her two year old due to SIDS, so I've been quite precious when it comes to P as of late. I don't know this woman very well, but she's about my age, and she was pregnant with her first not long after I was. I never saw her daughter until the week before she died, when I passed them as I was leaving work; I was holding P, she was holding her daughter. I was comparing her daughter's size to P's, as I do obsessively - a residual long-lasting effect of having a baby born early with serious reflux.

I know it sounds so stupid, but with death I always struggle with the whole notion of here one moment, gone the next. With children this is multi-faceted, because I have spent far too much time trying to remotely fathom what the mother is going through. I don't even have the words to describe how little I am able to comprehend the whole situation.

This is why I'm teary each time P says something like, "We two girls love each other Mum!" and "I'm so excited about Girls' Day Out! No boys allowed, right Mum? No Dad, RIGHT MUM?" In ordinary times my heart would twinge slightly, now I inadvertently go to that dark place I'd rather not go and wonder how I would deal with never hearing similar things again.

It doesn't bear thinking about, but I don't know how to banish those thoughts from my head these days. At night I try not to listen to each breath she expels from the next room; as soon as I start, I'm awake for ages ensuring that one follows the other as it should. I attempt to convince myself that such dreadful occurances are thankfully rare, but I've always been cursed with the overriding thought that if these things are going to happen to anyone, they'll happen to me. I also hate myself for being so melodramatic about it - these concerns of mine are based on the actual experience of someone I know, and I am carrying on about what ifs. This poor woman has to live it, and here I am agonising about hypotheticals.

When is the time

2009-09-18T23:23:00.003+01:00

After at least a year or more of mostly internal deliberations, I've arrived at a decision. I think it's time to try and surrender my uterus to a sibling for P. It's only within the past six months that I've felt remotely interested in trying for another baby, but my concerns about the logistics of life have gotten in the way.

I voiced my doubts the first time round as to whether I was ready, or even truly wanted a child. I'm still unsure how much of it wasn't due to my long-term ability not to not be able to get pregnant and my innate hatred of failing to accomplish something I'm intent upon achieving. Regardless of my reasons for pursuing treatment, it's a decision that enriched my life to an extent I wouldn't have thought possible.

Because of this, it's hard to genuinely believe that I am confident in my decision. It's strange - something happened along the way that made me go from being all, "Second kid? Fuck no!" to "Ohmigod. Babyeeees are soooo cute!" in a short space of time. I suppose things settled in such a way that I felt comfortable where I was as a mother, thus allowing me to consider that I could do this again. If I allow myself to deliberate too much, I worry that my optimism is a bit too bold, and a year, or a year and a half from now I'll read this again and laugh at my abject ignorance.

Even once I thought I was ready for a second child, life got in the way. Where would we live? Certainly not this dinky two-bed flat which is bulging at the seams with the three of us. As our plans are to relocate to the US in the near future, there would be no point in buying a bigger place in the UK. Job? I am applying for jobs in the US on a weekly basis, desperately hoping that someone will finally think I am capable of being employed in that country once again. Having a kid would obviously delay that for awhile. Quite awhile.

Recently I've decided to stop analyse so friggin' much and just jump right in. You can only debate a subject's pros and cons for so long before it dawns on you that there is no path to the right answer; it will never present itself. The pros are unchanging, the cons generally strong enough to withstand every angle of pondering. We'll move eventually, I'll get a job in the US at some point. However, we all know these girl parts weren't so keen on reproducing when I was in my early 20s, so now at 31, depressingly, the clock is ticking.

I'm giving myself some time to get used to the idea, perhaps a couple of months. I need to try and wean myself off Celexa, which may be the biggest challenge with this whole gig. Those in the know - does one really need to kick the SSRI habit before trying to get pregnant, because, um...EW! I'm having some anxiety issues at the moment WITH my pharma pal, I would not be remotely interested in having Teh Secks if I was too busy having panic attacks and doing my fainting goat impression. I may as well just skip the hors d'oeuvres and go straight to the IVF.

Who knows what the future of this blog may bring? Will I be talking about pussaries again? Taking photos of my beloved Puregon Pen partying on my gut? Regardless, hopefully it will all lead to my pregnant lady boobs being ogled again by construction workers. After all, that's what we're all really fighting for.

No Easy Feet

2009-09-12T21:16:00.003+01:00

This post is about running, which is why I called it "No Easy Feet". Get it?? Get it?? Yeah, ok, it's lame. It is all I could come up with aside from "Fuck my shoes", which would possibly get me banned by Blogger and would certainly not have my post appear on the BlogHer ad strip. Instead, you get poor punning.

So yes, running. I totally fell off the wagon when in the States, running only once. That one time was sufficient for me; it was hot as hell and I'm pretty sure every trace of liquid present in my body pre-run was shed along that 5K trip. As I have mentioned before, I ate my prodigious ass, stomach, and upper thigh weight in naughty foods, and gosh darnit if you can't tell in my mid-torso corpulence.

I don't regret it, as my usual monk-like asceticism regarding food was finally relieved and goodness was all that sinfully bad food delicious. It just meant I'd have to work harder when I got back to the UK. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that my running shoes (Brooks GTS for those taking notes) take a good 3 years to become adapted to. When I bought them in June, I went from easily running my normal distances to struggling to do half thanks to the adjustment period.

My problem is that I have arches under which you can drive a medium-size truck. I'm also a redonkulous overpronator, so I need the running shoe equivalent of those black boots with the leg braces attached. I'm pretty sure a civil engineer was drafted in to design these shoes, they are so intent on correction of poor form. Pre-Brooks shoes, I was wearing an old pair of Nikes with collapsed air cushions thanks to my overpronation choking the life out of the cushioning. It took me at least two weeks for my body to adjust, in which time it felt with every run that I had cinderblocks attached to my feet.

Now I'm back at that point. I'm keen to get this thing moving again, but it's such a chore at the moment I'm using the will to run. I get to about 1K before I'm cursing my ability to be even slightly spritely. I feel heavy, as if I'm clomping along the seaside like an oafish, out-of-shape lump. I keep telling myself that I worked through it before, I will do it again with some time, but it's hard to maintain that attitude when you can't even run 5K without wanting to tear your legs off.

I don't know why I'm blogging about this - short of gifting me a pair of normal feet there isn't much to be accomplished by rambling about it. If anyone else has had to suffer through a shoe adjustment period, I'd love to hear about it. While you're at it, if anyone can tell me what they do to persevere through a workout despite your tired self wanting to give up, I'd like to hear about that too. Shoes aside, I'm having some trouble just working through difficult parts of my runs. It's not a matter of endurance, but rather me lacking willpower to carry on when challenged. Despite all my big talk on here about exercising, I'm a dreadfully lazy person and often just stop when I can't be arsed anymore. If someone has a magic way of sticking it out, teach me your ways! I'll be waiting here, wearing my shoes, thinking of going running, but opting to watch Rock of Love 3 instead.

The times they are a' changin'

2009-09-03T20:49:00.005+01:00

Not too long ago, there was this:

Almost a year later, it was time for me to go back to work and stick P in Nursery: Das Gulag. At 11 months, this was her first full day of hard labour:

Yesterday, my baby started her first day at Big School. Big School dictates that one must wear regulation school-specific apparel, only available to be purchased from the school directly or one large department school. One must have a red leotard and matching red ballet shoes, again, purchased from a singular store, and one store alone. Hair, if below shoulder length, must be pulled up, but only using a navy hairband! Shoes, black, cannot possibly be patent, and have to feature a t-bar design. Any other shoe construction pattern is unacceptable. In the winter, if one must wear a scarf, said scarf must be the school's own design. The saving grace, at least for another year, is that she needn't wear the school blazer, available at the earlier-mentioned department store for the bargain basement price of 80 British pounds. We'll be getting out a loan shortly in preparation.

So here she is - my wee "big" girl in her uniform, complete with her first pair of Docs. You can put my kid in a uniform, but I'll make sure she has a hint of subculture peeking out somewhere.

Can I have that?

2009-08-30T23:15:00.004+01:00

It's time. I've sat on my Flo stories from our US trip for a few weeks now, and it's patently unfair to deprive you all of their magnificence.

I really cannot be arsed to find the old links with all the tales of Flo and my odd family, but there is a label for this post, and momentarily I'm going to go back and label all my family-related posts as something dazzlingly creative - "FAMILY". I have a reader base of about 12 and a half people, all of whom know the ins and outs of my family dynamics, so if you've stumbled here after googling "What does IVF mean?" or "first comes love, then comes marriage" (the two most popular searches leading here), please check out some of those links - I promise you won't be disappointed.

Would you believe that though I only saw Flo and her gentleman caller once during our nearly month-long trip, that I have stories to tell? I'm cheating a bit, as one happened after we left, but it's too good to leave out.

Flo was, as one would expect, invited to P's American birthday party. We had quite a few guests, so I didn't have an opportunity to spend much time with any one person - a blessing not so disguised. Flo was inoffensive for most of the occasion, that is, until she told my brother that he should abandon his girlfriend at the party and mingle a bit more. The woman's physical composition is surely at least 80% narcotics, so I don't know why we are ever surprised at her lack of tact. My brother's girlfriend, T, is new to our family events, poor soul, so it would have been desperately unfair to leave her drowning in the sea of abject insanity that is my family.

I think that had she said it in a joking tone with no intent to offend, you would be under the impression that it's just a passive aggressive comment and move on. However, Flo does not mince words. The passage of time has dulled my memory of what I was told of this event and thus I will paraphrase, but roughly she said to my brother quite pissily, "You hardly ever see your family. Maybe you should stop hanging out with T so much and go talk to them." Ahhh...you gotta love her.

Flo wasn't done with T yet. Flo's creepy ass, most-likely-Asperger's "friend" has an odd preoccupation with what T eats and how she exercises in order to maintain her nice figure. Flo caught wind of this conversation, which has also taken place at another gathering, and by all accounts was really giving T the old hairy eyeball. You know, because T, an attractive 26 year old, secretly wants to get with a guy in his late 50s who wears glasses like this:

Hats like this (unironically, I might add):

...and his tube socks pulled up to his knees - likely wearing sandals as well. Who wouldn't want that??

When it was time for her to leave, Flo asked my Mom if she could have a "little bit" of food. Obviously she wasn't going to leave without asking to take something with her, which I suppose is better than just assuming an item like she usually does. This time, a "little bit" translated to most of the cold cuts (Central PA loves their lunch meat - holla!) and a vat full of fruit salad. We weren't quite aware of the large amount of missing meat until we tried to make some sandwiches later that evening. My brother was livid, because there isn't much that boy likes more than his food.

Fast forward a few weeks - I'm on the phone with my Mom. Flo had just been down for a visit, and they had an uneventful and rather brief visit. My Mom just found out she won a gift basket from a local business, and when she returned from collecting it she was showing it off to Flo. Rather than sharing in her excitement, Flo just looked at the basket wide-eyed and said, "What can I have?" The woman is in her mid 50s; even P wouldn't presume an item from someone else's presents could be hers, and she's a dictatorial three year old.

I despair of Flo, but goddamnit if she doesn't make trips to the US more entertaining.

Music Monday: Loves Music, Loves to Dance

2009-08-24T21:17:00.006+01:00

I guess that since I'm kind of a mother who blogs I should, at times, blog about my kid. I have one you know. She's three. Yep. She thinks she's 15, but I'm pretty sure I didn't have her when I was 16, so I'm confident she is in fact three years old. The line, "No, you didn't offer a choice!" when told to choose between not shouting (keeping recently purchased Peppa Pig DVD)/shouting (returning the Peppa Pig DVD) is not something which usually slides off the lips of a three year old.

My kid loooooves music, and cuts a rug at every given opportunity. The music-listening I attribute to me, the dancing, to her grandmother (god help us). Unfortunately she seems to have her father's taste in music, with slight mother-influenced picks here and there. I decided the other day that now that she's three, it's high time I made her her very first mix cd. I felt like Rob Fleming/Gordon until I actually started adding the tripe to the CD to burn. Then I just felt cheap and dirty. I managed to squeeze some of "my" music in there which will hopefully redress the balance.

Regardless, it's not about me. I'm all for P listening to grown-up music, and much as it pained me and made me feel a bit Tipper Gore, I even got the clean versions of the songs. Oy, it has come to this.

P invites you to get down at your computers at the tunes she loves. That, or turn your speakers off and pry your eardrums out with skewers. Either or, really.

Track 1: L.E.S. Artistes: Santogold

Track 2: Dancing Queen: Abba (I'm more of the Priscilla Queen of the Desert, "NO MORE FUCKING ABBA!" line of thinking, but what the kid wants, the kid gets)

Track 3: Bulletproof: La Roux (or in P parlance, "Hoolaypoof")

Track 4: Hollaback Girl: Gwen Stefani

Track 5: Hips Don't Lie: Shakira

Track 6: Ring of Fire: Johnny Cash (aside from occasional confusion regarding who is Obama and who is Johnny Cash, she generally knows who JC is)

Track 7: I Kissed a Girl: Katy Perry (I hate myself for this one - bisexuality as a gimmick drives me mad)

Track 8: In For the Kill: La Roux

Track 9: Beautiful Dirty Rich: Lady GaGa

Track 10: Boys Boys Boys: Lady GaGa

Track 11: Paparazzi: Lady GaGa

Track 12: LDN: Lily Allen

Track 13: Mamma Mia: Abba (I had to put this on her CD so she learns more lyrics than the "Mamma Mia, here we go uh-gain, my my dah dah dah dah dah dah" and repeat)

Track 14: Mama Do: Pixie Lott

Track 15: Furry Happy Monsters: REM

Track 16: Umbrella: Rihanna

Track 17: So What: Pink

Track 18: Lollipop: The Chordettes

Track 19: You Are My Sunshine: Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan

Do your kids listen to kid-specific music, or are there other heathens like me out there that largely shun such things in favour of music of the parents/radio?

Bookish

2009-08-14T23:36:00.005+01:00

I am back on the soil of Albion, as bloated as a goose fattened for Christmas. I ran once in my trip to the US and ate copious amounts of junk food, so I suppose this is my comeuppance for lethargy.

Jumping from excess to books, perhaps not seamlessly, I'm going to rabbit on a bit about what I've been reading. As you may know, I got a Kindle for my birthday. I stroke it lovingly every evening, whisper sweet nothings into its USB access port, and write it tender poetry every fortnight. It's a marvel of modern invention and I might make it an honorary second child.

My mind is awash with the many possibilities of what can be put on this thing, and I was initially unsure what to make my first official purchase. However, I am easily swayed and bow very easily to peer pressure, and young Molly had been talking favourably about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series for some time. Neither one of us are fans of the romance genre, but as the series is also classified as historical fiction, we have assumed this umbrella instead, choosing to assiduously ignore the dreaded "r" word.

Let me just tell you - I couldn't get enough of the first book (Outlander) in this series. Despite being jet-lagged, forced into going back to work within 24 hours of my return from a month-long trip to the US, an at-times needy husband, and a demanding, tyrannical toddler, I read this book in less than a week. This book is nearly 700 pages long friends. That's some heavy reading for a flighty, ADD-addled person like me.

I admit, there are some cheesy as hell sex scenes. To wit:

"'Aye, Sassenach,' he muttered, answering my movements rather than my words. 'Ride ye I will!' His hands dropped to my breasts, squeezing and stroking, then slid down my sides. his whole weight rested on me now as he cupped and raised me for still greater penetration. I screamed then and he stopped my mouth with his, not a kiss, but another attack, forcing my mouth open, bruising my lips and rasping my face with bearded stubble. He thrust harder and faster, as though he would force my soul as he forced my body. In body or soul, somewhere he struck a spark, and an answering fury of passion and need sprang from the ashes of surrender. I arched upward to meet him, blow for blow. I bit his lip and tasted blood.

I felt his teeth then on my neck and dug my nails into his back. I raked him from nape to buttocks, spurring him to rear and scream in his turn. We savaged each other in desperate need, biting and clawing, trying to draw blood, trying each to pull the other into ourselves, tearing each other's flesh in the consuming desire to be one. My cry mingled with his, and we lost ourselves finally in each other in that last moment of dissolution and completion."

In Gabaldon's defense, can a sex scene in a non-erotic novel be written well sans "thrusting" and "savaging"? There is no "throbbing" in this passage, but I'm sure it's around somewhere.

Now I'm trying NOT to buy the second book in the series right away, because that's surely lame, right? Molly and I are book snobs perhaps, but seriously, it's hard to admit you really enjoy a book whose first edition cover was this:

It looks like one of my Mom's beach romance books from the early 90s; books that she fondly referred to as "crotch novels". That's one classy broad right there.

I have some works more appropriate for a book snob on my Kindle - Anna Karenina, The Early Stories: 1953-1975 (Updike), Jane Eyre, Native Son, Pride and Prejudice, Sister Carrie, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and a number of books obtained from what might be the best e-book website ever - http://manybooks.net/ . I've gone majorly nerd overboard there and I don't even want to visit there now as I know I won't go to bed until at least 3am if I do.

What are you reading? What do you want to read? If you have some written guilty pleasures, what are they? This isn't a pathetic appeal for comments, I want to know. Well, that, and I miss you. Not having a regular line to tweets and blogs for over a month has made me all wistful and what not. So, what say you?

*UPDATE*: Because I need more books like I need my left ovary to be more posterior, I stopped by my favourite charity shop today and bought four more bloody books. Oops. For the princely sum of £7.50 ($12.40) I now have "World Without End" by Ken Follett, "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx, "The Edible Woman" by Margaret Atwood, and...and...er, "Lord John and the Private Matter" by one Diana Gabaldon. God help me.

Doomed

2009-08-05T05:10:00.003+01:00

I usually stay a safe distance from Facebook quizzes*, as they are often riddled with spelling and grammatical errors along with a penchant for grade school-like phrasing. I don't really need to know what Sex and the City character (Miranda) I am anyway. However, I noticed my Cheese Hand did a political quiz and I just had to have a go.

I have an abject fear of doing quizzes like this and finding out that I'm much more right than originally thought. I dissect the questions to ensure I'm answering them properly, because seeing a graph with a red dot lingering perilously close to "Neocon" would no doubt trigger a brain aneurysm or other striking brain bleed. Thankfully, I scored quite left, notably in social and cultural issues - who knew?

The purpose of this is not to flaunt my liberalism to gain hipster cred; that's what my Johnny Cash middle-finger-at-San-Quentin t-shirt does for me. I'm just concerned that Neo-Con Pru is right around the chronological corner. My Mom is an ex-hippie, those who know my real name would have some indication of this. Somehow, over the past few years particularly, she has become increasingly conservative despite erroneously believing that she remains very liberal.

Mom is retired, but works as an educational consultant for developmentally delayed children. One of her clients is a little boy with a less than ideal home situation - his mother is mentally disabled, a drug addict, and rather keen on pregnancies. Lots of pregnancies. She's 21 and has been pregnant five times. The house is apparently a complete mess, with roaches scurrying up the wall and floors sticky with unknown substances. I think it's evident that children should not grow up in such an environment, but my Mom seems to believe that as someone hired to help this child with his developmental issues, she should also act as a social worker - she has actually told the mother that she should "keep her legs closed."

I always confess to being less sympathetic to poor (as in quality, not financial circumstances) parents who manage to reproduce successfully numerous times despite not being in an ideal position to do so - it's my job as a recovering infertile. The difference between my Mom and me is that I would never, under any circumstances, actually TELL the offending person this. Being all liberal and shit, I acknowledge that it's not my responsibility to tell anyone how to live their lives. Aside from professional boundaries overstepped, I can't believe she has justified to herself that it's ok to pass her own views so strongly on this woman.

Within this discussion, she mentioned that some people (presumably women) should be forcibly sterilised, thus eliminating the possibility that so many people will become rubbish parents. I couldn't quite tell if she was exaggerating, but I don't doubt that she wasn't. Not long after she trotted out tired cliche of "People need a license to drive a car. You even need a license to fish! Somehow, you don't need a license to PARENT!" Goodness. I suppose she has at least contributed to the assembling of some meaningless phrases for the inevitable weekly Letter to the Editor submissions she will be writing in a couple years' time.

After presenting her case to The Dude and me, she remained convinced that she is in fact, "really liberal." I happen to think that this is simply in relation to the population around here, which isn't saying much. My Mom believes herself to be liberal due in part to her presence at PrideFest a couple of weeks ago. She, in her words, has "no problem" with homosexuality, so the gay population of the world should release a big sigh of relief there. It's so magnanimous of her, I know. Speaking of her abiding liberalism, I bet even some of her best friends are black!

I feel horrid picking on my Mom as it's just another one of her eye-rolling idiosyncrasies, but I can't help feeling this is my future. Are the liberal among us staring down the barrel at impending conservatism? Am I a mere two decades away from ranting about how most women just use abortion as a method of birth control? Will I take a quiz on the '29 version of a social networking site which firmly allies me with neocons?

*My real-life exists on FB, so any of you blogging types who know me there - please don't mention this little place!

Music Monday: Summertime

2009-07-21T02:59:00.004+01:00

This is my third post in as many days I think, so I'm going to cheat a bit. Light years ago my brother, breaking his arm patting himself (I actually typed "hisself") on the back, sent me an email with all links and summaries included for a Music Monday. I've given MM the short shrift lately, so now that I'm on holiday and doing precisely nothing every day, I thought I could do some cutting and pasting to get this topic off the ground again.

So here we go. Brother's comments included.

Lemon Jelly-The Staunton Lick--This song always calms me down and makes me feel great, no matter what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBLWDF2nfP8

The Verve-Bittersweet Symphony--No explanation needed. Classic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GnWRjoP9mQ

Marc Broussard-Home (Let it be known that the album version is fucking stellar but most of the rest of the album is crap) You can watch the actual video on youtube, you just can't embed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Ty_h736-I&feature=related

Led Zeppelin-Fool in the Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBJCrMKlxLY

Oasis-She's Electric--Crank that shit up, the first 10 seconds are amazing full blast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04hcZwqYVpI

Bob Marley-Stir It Up--Most any Marley song will suffice in the summer time. If you can't find joy in his music, I don't know how you find joy in life at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U-TGahwvs

M.Ward feat. Zooey Deschanel-Never Had Nobody Like You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIqH2gm5XAs

Gov't Mule-Soulshine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0BNlYY_RA

Jay-Z feat. Santogold-Brooklyn We Go Hard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QftcJtvLr8g

Wilco-You Never Know. Fucking. Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSQjcAxbR0

Now she is three

2009-07-19T04:10:00.007+01:00

A mere hour and 21 minutes ago marked precisely three years since my baby was born. Some of you have been readers of my rambling since I was doing my IUIs, so to have a three year old on the other side of four IUIs and an IVF means I've been at this for rather awhile.

Before I got pregnant, The Dude and I would imagine our potential offspring. Despite numerous hours dedicated to the imaginary child's traits, we never could have predicted the child we now have.

P is stubborn, willful, spirited and at times, conniving. She's a challenge, but in a strangely enjoyable way. P ensures that I am not a complacent mother, and I admit to being somewhat surprised at how much I crave to spend time in her presence. She can infuriate me in one moment like she did yesterday when refusing to try on summer sandals, to creating a mad rush of all encompassing love, as she did the next when this exchange occurred:

Me: "P, Mummy has to say that she doesn't like you very much right now."

P: ::saddest frown you've ever seen::: "That is NOT a very nice thing to say Mum!"

Parents gush about how beautiful their children are, something I'm not immune to. However, the beauty that I see is in the sheer amazingness that this small, developing person is the product of me and The Dude - she's not our tiny, wiggling baby, but rather our little girl finding her way in the world as its complexities present themselves to her. I often stroke her bare legs as she falls asleep, marvelling that much smaller versions of these strong, athletic limbs not long ago beat the hell out of my insides.

I'm not good at attempting to be serious and lyrical, and I know that no combination of words I could devise would ever fully encompass the wonder and adoration I have for P. She makes me laugh, often to the point of tears, and she makes me angry, also, on occasion to the point of tears. I am still not a gushing, obliging mother who years to spend every waking hour with her child, but I never thought I'd be capable of a love like this.

Happy third birthday, sweet P. You are my sunshine, always and forever.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

2009-07-18T03:12:00.003+01:00

What better way to celebrate my FOUR HUNDREDTH POST than to give you a little window into my humiliating, no good, very bad day.

As you know, I'm back in good old Pennsylvania to spread my cheer and good nature. Today there were grand plans for a road trip to the Baltimore Aquarium with our own wee motley crew - The Dude, our kid, me, my brother, and Mom. We left the house on time, had some pleasing McDonald's coffee, and enjoyed the scenic drive through the south of the state into Inner Harbor. All was well until we parked, whereupon I felt a slight drip emerge from my right nostril.

Most people are fortunate enough to be able to grab a tissue, give the nose a quick wipe, and move on. Unfortunately, I am blessed with a fucked up inner nose which makes me prone to spontaneous and aggressive nosebleeds. Most of my life I've been subject to others' confusion as to why my nose would start bleeding without the aid of a solid punch, brain tumour, or heavy cocaine addiction. I don't know why - it just does. It's not a few drips and I'm done, it's full-fledged gushing and it can go on for 20 minutes or more. I got a double-nostril nosebleed during a studio art class in college which forced me into a cramped bathroom stall for half an hour; the best part is that I had my period then as well. My body just loves to expel blood with urgency.

This morning I sat in the backseat of the car grabbing dirty McDonald's napkins off the floor, utilising P's snotty muslin cloth, whilst frantically trying to mop up the escaping blood streaming down my hands with baby wipes. Meanwhile, P was sitting in the trunk (the car is a hatchback) with my brother singing nursery rhymes, while Mom peered at me nervously from one of the doors, and The Dude held a frozen juice box to the back of my neck in an effort to slow the bleeding. The occupants of neighbouring cars pretended not to notice, but we all know how hard it is not to rubberneck when a random stranger is bleeding inexplicably.

After panicking about the amount of blood and duration of the nosebleed, it seemed things started to slow. I was immensely relieved, as ever since the Celexa-induced fainting spell at Christmas caused by a panic attack, any time I start to get anxious, I picture myself suddenly falling over like one of those fainting goats. Once I was finally able to withdraw the coiled up tissue from my nose, I noticed that my khaki trousers featured numerous, very noticeable blood splatters - one on the inside of my right knee the size of a very large piece of chewing gum, gradual drips down my left leg, and a particularly charming accumulation of spots in the upper crotch area. Yes. It does not get better than having a massive nosebleed which leaves you looking as if your tampon isn't the extra jumbo one that was needed.

The plan of attack was to buy replacement clothes so as not to enter the Aquarium looking like a mugging victim. Unfortunately, we were on borrowed time thanks to the Aquarium's rather rigid ticketing schedule and the fact that the only apparel store evident was Filene's Basement. I was dreading the experience because I avoid clothing shopping at all costs due to residual body image issues, as well as having to arrange my bag in such a way to cover the apparent period blood. I optimistically gathered a handful of trousers in the size I believed myself to be. Unfortunately it seems the size I think I should be after all the godforsaken running and exercising I have been doing is a mirage that is not yet a reality. Cue dressing room tears (because I'm nearly 31 years old and all), which carried over to shop floor tears, which triggered the nosebleed switch in my brain and led to me leaning over my bag trying to be covert about the blood streaming from my nose.

The Dude ushered me to a chair, where I praised all that is holy that I have long hair which can cover a face streaming with tears and dripping with blood. We gave up on the shopping expedition, so I faced a day in Baltimore with blood stained trousers. I'm still at the point where this is preferable to having to view my unclothed self in a full-length mirror.

Once in the Aquarium, it became apparent that wearing new shoes, though Puma trainers which look comfortable, is unadvisable on a long day out. In addition to constantly attempting to cover up the crotch blood, I was soon shuffling along like a pensioner. Thank god for accompanying family members, because the toddlers, they're not so much on slowing down for bloodied, temporarily disabled mothers. Friday is also the most popular day at the Aquarium they say, so lines were long and in the hot temperatures, body odour was rife.

Post-aquarium we hoped to have a nice dinner. My Mom has a problem with her feet, so she was desperate to sit down. The Dude and my brother went to scope out restaurant availability, leaving P with the cripples. P dashed away from me at one point, and as I was chasing her down, I felt The Drip. I was away from my bag, which no longer had anything helpful in it anyway vis a vis nosebleeds anyway, so I had to continuously sniff to keep it all from spilling out. I finally caught up with P, got back to my bag, and used a wipe to impede the bleeding until I could reach a bathroom. Fellow sufferers will know that sniffing or head-tilting are not the best methods when dealing with heavy nosebleeds, so as I was scoping out a restroom, I could feel the blood pooling in my throat. What followed was a moment which always makes me feel like a wan, consumptive Victorian maiden and isn't the fondest of nosebleed side effects.

Upon locking myself in a cubicle for 15 minutes with only rice paper-like toilet paper, the bleeding finally stopped. I managed to have that nice dinner, and even had an uneventful ride home. I'm now sitting here in an empty room, blogging about things which should probably remain private, and getting ready to watch Roseanne. I bet this is just the return to blogging you were hoping for, right?

Hey, what's this?

2009-07-10T23:37:00.002+01:00

Ah yes, it appears I have a blog. Come and give us a hug - I've missed you. Things have been quite mad lately you see. Between a relentless work schedule yielding very few spare lunch hours, raising a toddler, a rigid running schedule, searching for a job, numerous (yet fruitless) job applications, and mandatory husband time, blogging has fallen very low on my list of priorities. I do miss it though, and certainly don't suffer from lack of inspiration, just time. Apologies to any I've been ignoring through social networking mediums and email. It's true that I have forever sucked at such things, but lately this has been enhanced exponentially.

The up side is that today I finished my last day of work for one calendar month. Yes, one MONTH. Monday we set off for the sunny climes of central Pennsylvania. I can sense your seething jealousy from here. I get it; Wal-Mart culture and the Amish are enviable hallmarks of a good vacation.

In previous years I have shouted round the blogosphere, begging to meet up with people. As is my way, when it came time to socialise I backed out for various reasons. Is it possible to put a sort of no pressure call out to poeple on the off chance that I do have the time and ability to meet up with some of you? I'm all talk it seems - I am dreadfully, nay, WOEFULLY inept socially, and also lazy, so I can't cope with arrangements made much in advance. In my own defense I do have some restrictions like occasional lack of transportation, spousal and toddler neediness, and familial obligations. This is my long-winded way of saying that if you live in the mid-Atlantic area, send me an email (barrenalbion at gmail dot com) that I hopefully bother to respond to and maybe we can set something up. I certainly know how to sell myself.

I thought I'd start out slowly with this blogging thing again. My goal is to tell you all about my tortous 10K last Sunday in a post tomorrow. I will impress even myself if I can manage to do that and stick to my word. Make sure you come back. There will even be pictures!

Born to Run

2009-06-27T23:28:00.004+01:00

I seem to start every post with my apologies for repeating myself, as I apparently report most of my life on Facebook and Twitter as well. Ah, social networking cross-pollination, what a wonderful thing.

So yeah...uh, running. SORRY. Running and way too much work at, you know, work, are the reasons blog-reading have gone by the wayside. Well, that and all the power blogger ass kissing that is so rampant these days (cross-pollination again, mea culpa), but that's a topic for another day.

I try to run 20-25 kilometres per week, but sometimes life gets in the way. As I've mentioned before, some nights it's a struggle to do more than a few kilometres, which makes me very pissed off at myself for failing so miserably. However, though Thursday was one of those nights (struggled to get 3.5k done), tonight I pushed myself and ran 12.5k. That's the furthest I've ever run by 2.5k, and it surprised the hell out of me that my legs remained attached to my body as I climbed the stairs back to the flat.

I made a personal best time of 58.53 for 10K, and managed the whole thing in 1.16.00, so I am inordinately pleased with myself right now. Not to go all puppies and rainbows on you, but less than a year ago I couldn't run more than five minutes without nearly collapsing in a heap of sweaty, panting rotundness. I have my first 10K "race" next Sunday, which is almost precisely a year since I started this running business. I promised that I would post a photo of myself post-run, but I'm getting a-scurrred of doing that now, so we shall see. Maybe I'll just put a photo up of my rack in the race shirt, because let me just say, though I may look like a total flooze, they do appear rather magnificent in it. Speaking of boobs, they will not.go.away. I could run straight through to next week and subsist on a diet of celery and water, and those things would not go anywhere. Big boobs 4 lyf. Shit.

What is the point of this, shameless bragging aside? Well, I don't want to get all if-I-can-do-this-so-can-you(!!) happy clappy rubbish, BUT really. I might be one of the laziest people on god's green earth, yet I have managed to stick with this for a year now. The Dude admits that he had no faith in me - I've gone on exercise jags before and quit within a month. I've somehow just reached a place that I needed to be in order for this to work. I'm not convinced that you can just start exercising and get on with it if you don't truly want to do it. It just seems like you're punishing yourself, and if it's going to be a long-term change, what's the point of facing years of self-flagellation in the form of physical activity?

I know that sounded Oprahrific, sorry. I'm just powered by endorphins and some really fine vanilla custard that I had post-run. It just makes me happy to see THAT photo of myself from last summer and know that though I still don't love my body, I'm now only moderately repulsed. I can at least not feel physically sick when seeing it reflected back at me. I'm even hopeful that for the first time in her nearly three years, I consent to having my picture taken with P on her birthday. Small steps.

The Crazy Returns

2009-06-23T22:50:00.003+01:00

I started a post about some random facet of motherhood, but then my own mother called and interrupted my flow. There was mainly talk of what curtains will grace the bedroom we'll be staying in - the theme is early Victorian (overload) in case you're interested.

In lieu of that waylayed post, I feel I simply must tell you the latest Aunt Florence tale. Oh, how I love to recount the stories. This woman is unparalleled, she really is. I refuse to believe there is another woman this functionally insane in existence.

In a recent visit with my Mom, Aunt Florence was on the prowl for more illicit items to assume. My Mom is strangely proud of her aversion to tidyness, which is why her house must be an inexhaustable treasure trove of possibilities to old Aunt Florence. Florence's keen magpie-like eye found a ring which she had to procure. In fairness, she did tell my Mom that if the ring disappeared, the culprit would be easy to figure out. I love her boldness - she doesn't even ask for shit anymore, she just tells you she's going to take it. She's aware that my Mom treads around her delicately thanks to The Crazy, so she just goes for it. Guess what couldn't be found after she left that weekend?

Young Molly tells me about her family sometimes, and they sound so delightfully normal. I love all of The Crazy in my family, but sometimes a bit of sanity and non-old sock stealing behaviour wouldn't go amiss.

Weighted

2009-06-17T22:55:00.003+01:00

Victims of my incessant running-related tweets and occasional blog post centred around running will know that this activity is a focal point of my life lately. When in optimal health (which is rare thanks to my oft disease-ridden offspring), I try to run 4-5 times a week, averaging 20-25 kilometres. At the moment, I'm also doing Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred, because I want to beat my body into merciless submission for the hell of it.

Almost a year ago I started running because I was weary of feeling like a thin person stuck in a chubby body. I'm aware that I wasn't "fat" in the traditional sense of the word, but I wasn't toned at all and extra weight does not sit right no my frame at all. You know those women who are 190 lbs but you'd swear they are about 140? That's not me - in fact, quite the reverse. Even before I had P and was a UK 12/US 8, people implied that I was larger than I was. My post-pregnancy 150-155lbs (this is all a complete estimation as I shun scales)must have made me look 180.

I may be exaggerating slightly, though it is true that my excess weight never distributes evenly. It instead chooses to linger around my upper thighs, stomach, face and boobs in a most obtrusive, obvious way. Even now I'm trying and failing to get rid of the flab on my inner thighs and it is stubbornly refusing to shift. Whenever I hear reference to "kissing thighs" I think of the amount of dreadful rubbing the tops of my thighs have done for years now, thus preferring to call them "fucking thighs" for more than one reason.

So yes, the primary impetus behind me running was to lose weight. I would give lip service to the notion that I wanted to be healthier, which is of course a beneficial byproduct of exercise, but I would be lying if I said this was the main reason. I want to have and pass on a healthy body image to P, and losing weight is the only way I would be able to do this with any level of sincerity. I know this makes my good friend Molly very sad indeed, as she's completely on board with the body acceptance movement championed by Kate Harding. It does make me a bit sad and sorry for myself too, as I know that there is no feasible way I would ever be happy with myself not being thin. Admittedly, when I was under 120 lbs (which was until my early 20s), I hated myself then too, but for other reasons. How delightfully femme moderne of me.

Weight fixation is far too much of a presence in my life, which is why I'm bringing this up. I stare at my face in the mirror constantly, curious as to how someone getting this much exercise can have a visage which still resembles the moon. I push my work chair in as close to my desk as I can possibly sit in order to not have to view my thighs and stomach. I nearly had a panic attack at the hair salon the other day viewing my appearance in the full length mirror because I could only see my boobs as massive pillows of fat steadfastly obscuring the weight I have lost. I occasionally find myself lurking dangerously close to exercise-like-hell-and-eat-nothing-but-one-matzo-cracker-per-day territory, and I hate that feeling. I know it would negate all of this positive body image stuff that I'm hoping P will glean from me subconciously, but the voice tells me that at least I would be thin and again be told regularly, "...but there's not an ounce of fat on you!"

That's my mental state of being, which I acknowledge is less than stable. However, despite these conservative, hardline views on my on weight, I never feel that way regarding the weight of others. Just this week a Twitter/blogging friend who shall remain nameless mentioned a weight loss goal of hers - x lost kilos in a certain amount of time. When I first read of it, I felt the sadness that Molly must feel when I'm being all Debbie Downer. This woman is gorgeous, and I would never call her anything but slender and fit looking. However, she obviously feels the need to change, and of course, who am I to question this given my own issues with the same subject? It's a shame that so many of us feel this way, and even more tragic that a lot of women are like me and will probably never be properly happy with what they look like regardless of the effort put forth.

It's always easier to make suggestions or provide encouragement to others and not be able to heed your own advice. I've never been able to work out why that is. Intellectually, I am aware of my hypocrisy, but somehow that's not enough to see things from that perspective as it pertains to me.

So, for as long as I continue to inter on this net, I will shake my head at my screen when you talk about needing to lose weight, because no doubt, you are beautiful as you are and all that trite rubbish people spout. I will believe that to be true about you, genuinely and without pause. Just don't ask me to love my fucking thighs.

Show and Tell: Literati

2009-06-12T22:40:00.013+01:00

On a weekly basis for many months now I've been intending to participate in Mel's Show and Tell threads. I think it's a brilliant idea, I love seeing what other people have to show off, but I'm just so painfully lazy and complacent. The only reason I'm doing it now is that I'm fueled by jellybean excess and SVU immersion, and this is the next logical thing to do. Obviously.

As some of you may know, I (very) casually collect antiquarian books and ephemera like old letters, purchased off eBay. I hesitate to call it a collection as it's composed of two books, two letters, and one WWII-era scrapbook, but I'm quite proud of what I do have.

My first acquisition was an Edward Burne-Jones book which seems to be inscribed to Burne-Jones' widow, Georgiana Burne-Jones, from their son Philip in 1909. It is then noted that it was passed on to someone else by EBJ's granddaughter in 1952.

I bought this book off eBay for something ridiculous like $20 at the height of my Burne-Jones and Pre-Raphaelite mania, something which has lessened significantly as I've aged and become more cynical, but this book remains one of my favourite possessions.

The inscription reads as follows: "Mother (Georgiana Burne-Jones, widow of Edward B-J) from Phil (Philip Burne-Jones, son of E B-J and G B-J), Nov 1909". A later writer, presumably the same person who presented the book as a gift in 1952, wrote the explanations. In the final dedication he/she wrote, "and now to EMC, from CM, granddaughter of EBJ, in everlasting gratitude, Christmas 1952." CM is Clare Mackail, whose signature and writing pop up in various auctions thanks to her connections with people like JM Barrie.

The photos in the book, though yellowed from age, are gorgeous reproductions, many of which have comments written beneath them as to their origin:

This one reads, "painted from Margaret Burne-Jones, his daughter, aferwards Mrs Mackail". Margaret, as well as Philip, can be seen as children here, in this photo from the National Portrait Gallery in London. Margaret is the youngest, and the other two girls are daughters of William Morris.

My second book of note is an early edition of Vasari's Lives of the Artists. Here I was thinking it was one of the first editions of the book in English, but as it turns out, the first one was in 1685, and mine ain't that. Mine is from 1885, so it's a mere 200 years later.

The inscription on this one is very hard to read, not because of faded ink, but poor penmanship. C'mon Victorians, I expected more of you!

I can get "For dear Mary from Jack and ...." as well as 1885, which, like one of the letters, has been written over and changed to 1887. Again, Victorians - you so crazy!

Some of the illustrations:

And finally, to drag the classy down to a notch or ten, here is my Toilet Sedaris. In actuality I have a signed copy of Naked, but as I lent it to someone it is not here to photograph. Instead, you must view my copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day, referred to above as Toilet Sedaris.

This next picture isn't great, but I hope you can see the warpedness of the pages from, you know, dropping it in the toilet. Confession time - I have lent this to someone in the past and not told them of its sordid Toilet Past. Gross, I know.

Thus ends the tour of a part of my moderately unusual library. Perhaps someday I'll do a Show and Tell on my emphemera, and I hope there are some nerds out there like me who might actually give a shit.

Music Monday: Life and Death

2009-06-08T20:34:00.001+01:00

I just can't help myself. I'm going back to the Guardian's 1000 Songs to Hear Before You Get Hit By a Bus, or whatever. Sorry. Blah, just blah. This week's theme - Life and death. Appropriately. Summaries are linked to below, courtesy of the Guardian.

1000 songs everyone must hear

Life and death: 1000 songs everyone must hear

My selection of 21 from the Guardian.co.uk list of 131

St James Infirmary Blues (Louis Armstrong, 1928)
This Is a Low (Blur, 1994)
Will the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By) (The Carter Family, 1935)
The Mercy Seat (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 1988)
My Favourite Girl (King Creosote, 2005)
Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode, 1989)
Black Eyed Dog (Nick Drake, 1986)
Summertime (Ella Fitzgerald, 1959)
Baggy Trousers (Madness, 1980)
Safe from Harm (Massive Attack, 1991)
Lithium (Nirvana, 1991)
Live Forever (Oasis, 1994)
Sour Times (Portishead, 1994)
Paranoid Android (Radiohead, 1997)
Paint it Black (The Rolling Stones, 1966)
Feeling Good (Nina Simone, 1965)
O Death (Ralph Stanley, 2000)
The End of the Rainbow (Richard and Linda Thompson, 1974)
Rufus Is a Tit Man (Loudon Wainwright III, 1975)
Grandma’s Hands (Bill Withers, 1971)
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams, 1949)

Louis Armstrong: St James Infirmary Blues

Blur: This is a Low

The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Nick Cave: The Mercy Seat

King Creosote: My Favourite Girl

Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus

Nick Drake: Black Eyed Dog

Ella Fitzgerald: Summertime

Madness: Baggy Trousers

Massive Attack: Safe from Harm

Nirvana: Lithium

Oasis: Live Forever

Portishead: Glory Box

Radiohead: Paranoid Android

Rolling Stones: Paint It Black

Nina Simone: Feeling Good

Ralph Stanley: Oh Death

Richard and Linda Thompsons: The End of the Rainbow

Loudon Wainwright: Rufus is a Tit Man

Bill Withers: Grandma's Hands

Hank Williams: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

Music Monday: New Music

2009-06-01T20:16:00.004+01:00

So here it is again, for what it's worth. I don't even know how many weeks Music Monday has been in absentia - it's such a labour of love (believe it or not) and I just haven't been feeling it lately. I'm not feeling it much today either, but The Dude is watching cage fighting and I am very down on life at the moment, so perhaps this will cheer me up a bit.

Pennsylvanians who listen to XPN and people fond of public radio will probably recognise my complete plagiarism (that word never looks right to me) of their playlists. Oops. Apologies as well that I'm so "Stuff White People Like" that it hurts.

K'naan: Wavin' Flag

I'm really digging this song and it's the newest addition to my running playlist (which needs all the revitalising it can get).

Ben Harper: Shimmer and Shine

There Brother of mine - Ben Harper. Again. A good summertime song and a bit different to his usual stuff, at least the things of his I know. I also think it will take my entire lifetime to figure out how such a hot piece of ass married and spawned with Laura Dern. Srsly.

The Felice Brothers: Penn Station

This song is catchy as hell, and I wish I could find a studio version on YouTube, but alas, it's not obliging.

Matisyahu: One Day

You know those "odd crush" blog posts and tweets that float about sometimes? Erm...

Dave Matthews: Funny the Way It Is

It's a running joke between Brother and me how deep my hatred for DMB runs. I never thought I'd include one of their songs on MM, but here we are. Turn around, the Horsemen might be behind you.

Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks

Puuurdy. Creepy video though. Blurgh.

Matt Duke: Sex & Reruns

This song makes me almost happy. Sweet litle thing.

Nicole Atkins: The Way It Is

I think I've had Nicole Atkins featured before, but hopefully not this song.

Animal Collective: Summertime Clothes

Yay, fun. This makes me miss Letterman though. Bloody UK television.

Sara Watkins: All This Time

Gorgeous song, if you like Americana/bluegrass/folk as I do. Sigh.

There's more, because there's always more. However, cage fighting is over and I've got a date in bed watching The Office with my husband. Requisite empty promise number 49403 - I will catch up on my blog reading. Someday.

Too old for this shiiii

2009-05-27T20:23:00.002+01:00

Growing up, I could have bought a McMansion in a crowded subdivision if given a penny every time my Mom would tell me that any social ills were caused by my advanced maturity. Trite phrases such as, "Girls mature faster than boys!", or "You're 12 with the mind of a woman in her mid-20s Pru; others will catch up eventually!", rang in my ears each time I could be found crying under my duvet (you may find this a constant in my life, even now -- LOVE duvet seclusion).

I'm two months off the advanced age of 31, yet give me five minutes on Facebook and I'm feeling 61. Tell me, is it only recent generations that just cannot give up the bar/drunken fool stage? As a non-drinker I'm biased, I know, but really - you're in your 30s, is there a need for half of your online photos to be various incarnations of your Drunk Asshole face? I get it, you're YOUNG! FREE-SPIRITED! ZANY! One picture of this would suffice.

Most people think that those who don't drink (or to excess) are boring. I'm sure I am frightfully dull to a very large subset of the population, but I don't care. If asked to brainstorm as to what would constitute an evening with friends, the word "bar" would only be included if it meant I was going to play trivia there. Ideally I would want to spend an evening in, have a nice dinner, talk, watch a movie, do things that respectable grown-ups do. Bottles of wine with casual tipsyness - fine, but as soon as a picture is taken of someone making googley eyes and sticking their tongue out, I'm gone.

I have tremendously fond memories of my drunken times in my late teens/early 20s. I have a fair amount of drunken photography taken by me and of me, some involving cleavage asparagus, others featuring a heavy-lidded Pru smoking cigarettes despite being a non-smoker. Thing is, I was in college, and that's what you do in college.

Once we hit our 30s surely it's time to pack up the frat and grow up?

A Call to Arms

2009-05-21T21:04:00.002+01:00

Let me just dust this thing off, excuse me. I hope to soon look at my Google Reader feeds without being gripped by a paralysing guilt assuaged only by pretending blogging is actually all fake.

My mother has left, which means no more half-assed compliments, so consider yourselves spared. I thank you for bearing with me while I whined about not being sufficiently rewarded for my troubles by my mother, since it seems that I'm still six years old and craving my Mom's validation. I swear, I'm not this needy in real life, really. No, really.

Changing topics entirely, I need your advice on things media. The Dude has made my life by telling me that I can shop for my very own special gadget - iPhone, iPod Touch, or Blackberry tomorrow evening. It will be an early birthday present, but as we're trying to rack up air miles in time for our US trip in July, this is a quick way to accumulate them. I'm very gadget-adoring, and had you been here a few weeks ago when I was setting up my BIL's iPod Touch you would have felt you were witnessing an unnatural union between woman and machine.

Despite this love, I'm in three minds as to which one I want. It's me, so I will research the hell out of this mother before making up my mind anyway, but I know you are clever, tech-savvy ladies with opinions. I don't use my mobile enough to warrant a monthly contract of £35, or whatever ridiculous sum they want for a monthly iPhone contract. There is a pay as you go option which is much more feasible for my kind of usage, but now I'm worried what would happen if I moved to the US. Anyone have any idea if you can just take these things when you move to another continent and carry on as normal?

I know the Touch doesn't have the phone element, and though I don't use my mobile enough, I'm wondering if I'll miss that part in not getting the iPhone. Basically, I think I want to know if the only difference between the iPhone and iPod Touch is the actual phone part. Otherwise, can you still use the apps to the same extent? I am madly, enrapturously in love with the notion of using magical, amazing apps standing in the middle of the street. I don't want to get a Touch and discover that half the apps aren't applicable.

I've saved the Blackberry for last because the extent of my knowledge about them is that people call them Crackberries. Oh, and that Debbie Whatsherfacegreekname from E! got carpal tunnel from hers. I said that like it was a communicable disease and not a hell of her own making. The iPhone/Touch is just so damn purdy, and I'm finding it very difficult to resist its siren song.

To save this post from the tragic whingeing of the spoiled middle class, I'd like to know what you people are up to media-wise. What are you watching? Listening to? Reading? We have spent weeks trying to catch up on DVRd TV, I've managed to forget that music exists, and it's taken me 3 weeks to read 20 pages of Cold Mountain. Obviously I need a wee gadget to distract me from the important things even more.

The more they stay the same

2009-05-16T00:13:00.002+01:00

Greetings children. Apologies for the absence and inconsistent blogging lately - my Mom has graced our shores to talk of my flat ass, I've been running a lot, I work full-time, and they tell me I have a small child reliant on my mothering. Who knew?
I was excited about my Mom's arrival, believing that though we only saw each other at Christmas, she would be impressed by my weight loss since then. Or, perhaps not. Instead, all I got was the general comment referring to my overall weight loss, "You look nice. Do you feel as if your clothes are any looser?" Que? Well, when one loses 15 pounds or so, it's usually a bit more than slightly ill-fitting clothing. In three seconds I went from being proud of myself to wondering if I have imagined the extent of my weight loss.

Mothers always have that supreme ability to say deflating things, intentional or otherwise. My Mom is of the otherwise variety, but it still hurts. So far, The Dude and one friend are the only ones to say anything about it all, which again, leads me to believe that this profound weight loss thought that is dancing about my head is due to my clearly potent anti-depressants rather than anything based in reality.

I know, I know, I should shut the fuck up already about my body issues, but people - I have worked HARD in the past nine months to get where I am. I run 20-25k/week, I lift weights, survive on healthy foods and little junk; if I don't look significantly better, what's the point? Yeah, I feel better, and it's great to know that 2.5 miles is a casual, easy run that I do when I don't have much time. Me of a year ago would have sputtered and coughed at the very notion of running for 2.5 minutes. Still, I want to look better too. A lot better.

Those privy to my Twitter outbursts of morosity the other day will know how much my Mom's lack of reaction bothered me. As punishment I only had one cup of coffee (my main source of sugar)instead of the usual two or three, and did sprints/3 miles one night, and 2.5 miles the next night. I am glad my Mom isn't around all the time to not notice weight loss, or else I would be out every night pushing myself until I passed out in the bushes.

I have no idea where all this body-based neediness comes from. I wasn't neglected as a child or deprived of compliments, so I have no excuse. I think a lot of it results from me hating (not an exaggeration) my body for the past 12+ years without trying to change it, and now that I have, any encouragement has to come from my own drive or The Dude's obligatory support. Don't get me started on my Mom's throwaway statement from her last trip, "You can borrow some of my trousers if you want" and how that doozy nearly pushed me toward wearing a vinyl weight loss suit in the Sahara whilst subsisting on lettuce leaves and grub blood. Oy.

Let me gather myself again and try to limit the drama. Ahem. If you see me on the street, just make sure to tell me how fine I'm looking lately. You'll make a girl's day.

Bullets

2009-05-08T22:48:00.002+01:00

I'm not prone to doing posts comprised of random little thoughts, but I wanted to address a few things that don't warrant their own posts. Apologies for the schizophrenic nature of this and lack of segue.

First up, I *finally* managed to run 10K tonight, for the first time ever. My average runs are 5K-ish, so to be able to conquer that distance by quite a considerable margin was quite a victory for me. I'm pretty sure my legs were preparing to detach from my torso toward the end, but I'm proud to say they're still present and accounted for. Yes, I may be unable to walk properly tomorrow, but that's no different from any other Friday night - hey-ohhhh!

On the topic of running, I have such an odd affinity for reading about other runners' stories of what they have done. A paragraph about running makes me all giddy, even if the writer is way more prolific than I am (not that it takes much). So, if any of you are runners, write about it sometime on your blog so I can grin at the screen stupidly and dream of running.

Also, to the runners (sorry to bore the rest of you who don't give a shit) - how often do you have off days, and are they really off? I struggled the other night to even run a couple of miles, like my trousers were weighted down with a gathering of pebbles. I got all pissy about it and moped for at least 34 minutes upon my return home. I know we don't all have great days, but jesus, it was as if I was just starting my Couch to 5K programme again.

Lastly, on the running issue, don't forget, I have my big 10K coming up in July for Cancer Research UK. I need sponsorship money, and I'm not above begging in this case. I'm not looking to garner cash to go to BlogHer for god's sake, so any donation is appreciated. No seriously, any amount. One pound, fifty pence, whatever. I'll even post a photo of myself post-race, plum-faced, glistening with sweat, with my eyes likely to be rolling into the back of my head. Funny story about this - I got my race t-shirt in the post, and when I proudly showed it to my dear husband, he said, "Are you sure that's big enough?" Har har, if it was meant sarcastically anyway, which it WASN'T. He backtracked, saying he thought it was a child's shirt, ergo, it wouldn't fit. It's a woman's medium, and yes, it fits. Bastard.

Oh yes, donations. Widget is in the right margin. I'll even show you a boob if you donate. The right one though, the left one is a bit smug as it is.

Changing subjects entirely, jobs. Who needs them? As you may know, I'm in the process of trying to get a job in the US, and the whole thing is so much of a kerfuffle I'm kicking myself for making this decision. I've applied for one position, but realised yesterday that though I made it clear in my cover letter that I'm free to fly over for interview/relocation, I didn't say that I would pay for it. In these troubled times there aren't many employers that would want to shoulder that financial responsibility for someone who may not even get the job. Dur. Lesson learned.

This particular job is in my wee home region of Central PA, so flying over isn't a problem since I'll have a place to stay. However, I am looking further afield as well - all along the Northeastern seaboard actually. There are a lot of good jobs out there, but obviously I can't afford to fly back and forth for a handful of interviews in places I've never been before. How do people even find jobs in locations in which they do not currently live? I know my situation is a bit on the extreme side given the distance, but still. It's not as if we'll move back to the US sans jobs and just give life over there a go, temporarily unemployed. As it is my plan is to go back with me being the only employed one until The Dude finds work as well. Hmph. Grown-up life is hard.

So yes, a post equal parts "go me/woe is me". How fun for you. Stay tuned for Sunday/Monday night, when I might actually be motivated enough to do a Music Monday post again, at long last. Yay!

Judge Not

2009-05-05T20:22:00.004+01:00

This post has been bopping around my brain like a jacked-up crackhead for months now. It's not like I'm going to break any blogging barriers here, discussing the played-out, godawful Mommy issue of judging, but I do want to discuss it anyway. People seem to call it "mommy wars", which just makes me think of catty little bitches with perfectly coiffed hair, driving their dreadfully suburban-named kids around in minivans. Therefore, I take no part in such endeavours.

I'm not against judgement - how can you not judge other people at all? If any of you are clear of judgement, parenting or otherwise, please tell me your secret. Is it ok to judge if the judgee isn't aware of your views? Do you only become judgemental once your views are known?

I've got this bee in my bonnet because I was reading a post on another blog about crazy Dr Laura's new book on how the only good mom is a SAHM, or something equally vitriolic. I have no time for that crazy witch, so I don't really care what she has to say. However, within the comments section a SAHM said that it is known that children with a stay-at-home parent (which, let's face it, is almost always the mother) are unequivocally better off than a child whose parents work full-time. Really? REALLY? Say what?

Fair enough to say that one way or the other is best for you, but is there a reason to tell us working mothers that we are raising our children in far less than ideal situations? Can't you just say "I love staying home with my BAYYYYYYBEEEES!" and be done with it? I get The Look all the time - the one that says "what are you doing here at work when you have a child?" Some people are so bold as to ask where P is during the day and how long she's in there, imprisoned. I know it's a well-tread topic on my blog, but each time I get The Look I feel like it's the first time I've been outwardly judged.

I judge all the time in my head - I have opinions on smoking and/or drinking around children, bottles, juice, bottles WITH juice, vaccinations, lack of discipline, blah blah blah. Am I still judgmental? I would never dream of vocalising my differing views to anyone but The Dude, but even with that limited audience I still do it from high atop my soapbox. My rationale is that at least I don't make people feel shit for their choices, choices that were best for them.

This rambling load of nonsense is just my way of petitioning people to just keep their opinions to themselves. It's fine to think that I'm a poor mother for abandoning my latchkey toddler, but save the raised eyebrows for someone who cares what you have to say.

Slippery slope

2009-04-28T21:03:00.003+01:00

Any time a conversation commences with a hesitant, "No offense, but..." or a cautious, "Don't take this the wrong way...", fear rises quickly from the pit of my stomach. I pray nothing is said about my weight, fat moonpie face, or eating habits, knowing that the subsequent shame spiral will put me off running and non dust-based food for the foreseeable future.

Today a colleague busted out the latter phrase, and I knew it wouldn't end well. So the quote makes sense, I was wearing high heeled boots, which is a departure from my standard collection of Rocket Dogs.

Her: "Don't take this the wrong way, but I think when you're tall like today you look like a teenager. When you're short, you just look like a mum."

Those loud sucking and screeching sounds you hear? That's my self-image evaporating and my head being ripped off by winged agents of Satan, intent upon dragging my soul into the depths of Mumsy. Those who know me will know that there are very few things which I would classify as an insult, and telling me I look like a mum is definitely one of those things. Tell me I have a flat ass - fine, I do. Tell me my hair looks like shit - it probably does. Tell me my boobs are too big - they are. Looking like the stereotype of a mother? You might as well hook me up with some high-waisted jeans, a grubby KMart sweatshirt, and a dandy collection of Hummel figurines.

I don't ever deny being a mother, and I'll never be like those post-menopausal ladies who only want their grandchildren to refer to them by first name only. I'm happy to be a mother, but jesus, I'm only 30, surely I have a few good years in me before I look like one. Some of you have met me - I'm not drowning in mummyness, right? RIGHT? I know I'm frumpy as hell, but I'm in metamorphosis at the moment (fat to thin, not cool to mum). Tell me the truth, no wait, no wait, lie if you must. I can only take so much honesty in one day.

My future has been foretold, and it looks a lot like this:

Shit.

(Un)remarkable

2009-04-22T21:59:00.002+01:00

"It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark."
-from The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry

Five years ago, at my grandfather's memorial, I was treated to a family photo slideshow edited by my redneck twentieth cousin. Most of the pictures of the long-dead I recognised, oddly-dressed people whose images sat on random bookshelves and mantelpieces in my childhood house. Maybe it was because it was my first major loss as an adult, but I found myself with the sudden desire to know more about them - their names, their professions, their history within their families, anything that created a link between who they were, and who I am. It makes you wonder what traits, physical or otherwise, are shared with the anonymous (in a personal sense) faces which litter our histories.

I have family members heavily involved with genealogy, and though I appreciate how much enlightenment is provided by this, it's mostly dry, factual documents which are unearthed. There is no essence of the individual, though I suppose this media-saturated age will solve this problem for future generations seeking the origins of their past. Blogging may be the domain of the closeted self-absorbed, but I've often thought of this as my document of the side of my life which can't be accessed by marriage certificates and passport stamps.

Initially it may seem a morbid subject, pondering your own place in the grand scheme of things. I think too many people get caught up in the notion of major accomplishments, and not so much on the minutiae that actually makes a person interesting. For me, I'd much rather find out my great-great grandmother collected preserved pig fetuses than discover another great-great-something-or-other graduated from Yale and was an early mayor of Boston.

I'm guilty of questioning my place all the time, mainly through blog reading. Certain people are scarcely older than me and publishing novels, or if they aren't yet, soon will be. Some have series of degrees and illustrious academic careers. There is me, a postgrad drop-out living in a diddy flat with a job I fell into, in a largely unimpressive field. However, I recently read an article about a hoarder in the North of England who recently passed away. No one knew much about him, and he didn't leave any family behind when he died. With one swift swipe by Death, a person was erased. Yes, there is this article, but it doesn't answer any questions as to who he was. The writer went so far as to say that the hoarder's life was "unremarkable", a word which leaped from the page when I read it. What makes a life remarkable, and who are we to judge what is classified as remarkable or otherwise?

No doubt by this writer's definition, I lead an unremarkable life. The rest of my time will probably be spent raising my daughter, working like the stiff I am, and enjoying life through what makes me happy. I suppose by the standard interpretation, my life is unremarkable in its ordinariness. Millions of people have the same life structure as me, so apparently you have to stand out in order for your life so as to avoid the dreaded designation of your life as unremarkable.

Delusional as it may be, I hope P, the most immediate source of who may have interest in my life, takes much more joy in what makes me an individual than what would make me "remarkable". She will know that I moved over to the UK at 22, knowing no one except her father and most of my possessions squeezed tightly into a couple of bulky suitcases. She will know that I have an inappropriate and all-consuming love of hip-hop music despite my abiding whiteness (so very, very white) and nerdiness. She will know that I collect old books, decaying letters from previous centuries, and antique art prints of Arthur Rackham illustrations. She will know that I think The Big Lebowski is the funniest movie ever, a fact of which she will be painfully aware as I will be quoting it until they lower me into my grave.

I might be in complete denial, making up for a life not flashy and important enough. Just don't call me unremarkable.

Lay back and think of England

2009-04-17T23:18:00.002+01:00

With all of the centuries of British literature, all I could think of for my England-focused post was the above. In my own defense, P has been unwell with a creeping, itchy rash and a swollen, funky foot, so I'm a bit sapped at the moment. Add to this my successful run this evening (5K personal best - 29.16, yay!), my stomach swollen with fresh berries and half fat creme fraiche, and right there is a recipe for forgetfulness and lack of inspiration.

A couple or one asked after my last post why I want to leave the UK. I think I've expanded on it a bit before, but I'm not so keen on trawling my archives so I'll just summarise again. I will always dearly love the UK. I became the person I am today because of how it shaped me, my daughter was conceived in British petri dish and was born here, and there are certain aspects of the UK I think you would be unable to see elsewhere even if you combed the edges of the earth thoroughly.

I was infused with Anglophilia from the time I was a child. Something about the UK just seemed "right" to me, and I was always telling people that I would live here someday. On my first trip to the UK when I was 17 I nearly collapsed in a heap of religious-level supreme ecstasy upon seeing the majesty of York Minster for the first time. It perfectly captured what I perceived the UK to be - stuffed with wonderous, ancient history, each step an echo of a fascinating history extending thousands of years. I still feel this powerfully, and I will never cease to feel the wonder of its history deep within me. There is a castle nearby which I have been to dozens of times, yet standing at the top of its keep and viewing the crumbling stonework below continues to make me emotional.

I think that romantic notion of Great Britain is what makes people Anglophiles in the first place. It's an annoyance of mine that the unintiated only see this side of Britain, and based on that think it must be a wonderful place packed with quaint villages full of thatched roofed houses and reserved people drinking tea, pinkie finger extended. There is plenty of that, yes, and it is such a huge part of why it is such a great place. However, there are flaws, just like any country, but the floaws that I find are just too insurmountable for me at this point in time.

I live in a big city, so I know that any negativity I perceive is enhanced by the claustrophic nature of city living. This is a culture of drinking. People live for the weekend, when the primary objective is to get completely wasted - unabashedly pissing in the streets and vomiting on the sidewalk. On a Monday walk to work I am likely to pass at least 4 splatters of puke, which offsets the numerous expanses of mosaiced window glass from car break-ins quite nicely. I'm all for enjoying life, but is it so hard to pull yourself together and save the release of bodily fluids for the bathroom at home? Lest you think this behaviour is reserved for the dark hours, I only wish it was. I see drunken, loutish idiots clutching cans of beer stumbling down the road at 9am, 1pm, and 5pm on most days. I live on a nice street with a cluster of £500,000 homes (not my flat, I fear), yet still, there is that constant of a slice of life I, let alone my daughter, do not want to see.

I worry taking P up to the shop at the end of our street for a pint of milk. Inevitably, we are surrounded by groups of loud obnoxious kids shouting obscenities at people just walking buy, or drunks whipping out their business so they can relieve themselves on cars. Other than walking to work and running in the evenings, I don't feel comfortable walking on my own. I avoid large groups of chavs (I'm sorry, I know it's painfully politically incorrect, but this is what they are - at work, domain of the polite, we refer to them as "the locals") because they will either shout rude things or ask me to buy them fags.

I am aware that this just sounds like someone complaining about any city's problems, but I think it's a problem endemic within British culture at large, certainly not relegated to big cities. Yes, I could move out of a city into a nice market town, but for the most part I would have to resort to the sex industry as mentioned in my previous post in order to finance this. Moving up North due to its less expensive nature was suggested by more than one person, and it is something we considered in the past. I personally think the gap in cost of living between North and South has narrowed greatly within the past ten years, and it's not the financial cure-all it once was.

In regard to cost of living and what we could afford, it does come back to my own need to live the kind of life which has resided in my brain all of this time. I grew up in a big(ish) house, had a yard over an acre, and miles of nature to explore. I so desperately want this for P. Even up North this is hard to find within our price range combined with an ideal location. I love the space the US affords, and I think regardless where you go in the UK, that inherent sense of claustrophobia exists. I don't doubt that this is my Americanness coming through, but I suppose it's only natural that a shred of it remains.

Those are pretty much the only reasons I want to relocate - no more drunken, destructive chavs, and a nice big house with land. Yes, yes, drunken miscreants exist everywhere, but there is more scope in the US from getting away from all of that if you choose your locations wisely. In my nearly 7 years of living here, I always have the impression that the undesirables are only a street corner away. This is where my snobbiness steps in, because yes, I want to shelter P from all of that. The "real" world is a great place which we need to be aware of, but not in the form of having to grow up too fast if you don't have to. I'm all for shielding her eyes for as long as I can. She will have the rest of her life to realise all of the crazy and disgusting shit that goes on in this world.

Just in case anyone pigeonholes me as an anti-British expat who is socially right of the Daily Mail, my list of things I'll miss vastly outweighs the things I won't. Living here has granted me a world view I wouldn't have gotten any other way. I always thought I was so open-minded and unpatronising until I moved here, when I realised how very wrong I was. I have grown so much, and what I have learned will no doubt remain with me and keep me defined as the Ameribrit I feel I have become even if my location changes.

Much as I love my American television shows, the British do factual, news and original programming like no one else. Even after all of this time I shake my head in amazement at having a primetime show on Baroque art on a main channel, frank news discussions whose aim is to make everyone uncomfortable with the truth, or a hilarious, mostly high-brow quiz show hosted by the world's most brilliant man. Just tonight I have been watching NewsNight Review (which has no US parallel, I'm sorry), followed by Jools Holland, because as you know mama likes her some fresh new music.

I will miss the media here in general. I'm already working on a way to regularly obtain my heart in written form - The Guardian. Some days I lay naked on its newsprint in the hopes I will absorb its amazingness. Nothing yet. I didn't think it was possible to love a newspaper as much as I do this one.

I will miss the people. The non-drunk, criminal ones, that is. I'm much more suited to the reservedness of British culture than the American need to have a constant conversation with everyone you meet. I don't do small talk, so in a country such as this which is a black hole for such trivialities, I'm in heaven. When I'm back in the US I am severely unnerved by fellow patrons in line that talk to me unprovoked. I'm sure I come off as socially retarded or immensely arrogant, but I just cannot cope with that rubbish.

I will miss the weather. Yes, you heard me correctly. The rain, the overcast skies, the wind - I love it all. An ideal meteorological day for me is dark skies, a hint of drizzle, and a temperature of about 48 degrees. Those people who get seasonal affective disorder because of the lack of sun - weirdos. I have the opposite, though I suppose it would still be called the same thing. Too many days of sunshine and warmth and I'm looking for a blackout blind and an ice box.

The most controversial thing I will miss is the NHS. Again, yes, that's what I really said. I think it's brilliant, and all of those American knee-jerkers ranting about an impending socialist society because of Obama's healthcare plans should know of what they speak before they cast judgments. I had to make an appointment last minute this morning for the doctor to prod P's gross foot, and by 11am I had a prescription for an antibiotic and some lotion which cost me absolutely nothing. My crazy pills? They cost me about £8($12)/month. Yes, we all know the problem I had getting those blasted pills in the first place, but that was down to the specific GP's philosophies rather than any fault on behalf of the NHS. My labour and childbirth were amazing and just what I wanted - the only people present in the room were The Dude, a midwife, possibly me, and eventually P.

I'm sure if it wasn't nearly 1am I could come up with more things, but I shall just need to bore you with them another day. My love/hate letter to Britain here is something I have wanted to do for awhile, particularly as the day we leave is drawing nearer and nearer. Well, that is, if my people (ie Americans) can give my ass a j-o-b. My hopefully-not-shit resume was just submitted last night at this time, so fingers crossed kiddos. If I find myself back in PA, I would be lying if I said I wasn't way too excited at the notion of being close to so many much-loved blogging friends of mine. Not Statia though, she swears too much. That's just tasteless.

Wayfaring stranger

2009-04-14T22:19:00.002+01:00

Yeah, so not to seem all needy and stuff, but 20 visitors in one day is just shameful. A girl more paranoid and blessed with sufficient sleep would wonder what happened to all of her blogging friends. I know what happened - I got pregnant three years ago and a huge chunk of them jumped ship. Things just ain't like they used to be. Wah wah wah, etc etc.

Ok, I'll try and pull myself together. I'm reading a lot of books lately, so perhaps I shall make them my new friends, harrumph. Please don't remind me that I'm so shit at commenting that most of you probably don't even remember my name - we'll just brush that under the carpet, ok? I'm digressing again, aren't I...I'm going to do a real post, I promise.

Do you recall that we were going to move to Canada? Weeeell, it appears as if that's off the table now. Once we submitted our final paperwork (prior to the required medicals), The Dude started to haunt ex-pat boards and ended up frightening himself out of it. I remained positive for a whole day or two before his negativity made me second guess my own optimism, and now I'm all, "Booo! America's hat wants to keep the non-Canadian down, booo!!" He is of the opinion that Canadian employers are unlikely to hire non-Canadians, and that job security is a foreign concept. I suspect that these perceptions originate from posts on the ex-pat forums from embittered, narrow-minded people with a rigid sense of what they perceive to be "right" or "wrong". Most of the women on my American expats in the UK list are provincial shrews who just cannot bear to accept that life is not the same in the UK as it is in the US. I imagine a lot of British people living in Canada are the same way.

With this recent development, our perspective has shifted and now I am looking at re-patriation. I check a specific job listing site as if that itself is my job, and I may even be applying for a position in my home state within the next couple of days. I'm exceptionally nervous about the prospect, as it dawned on me yesterday that I've never had a "real" job in the US. I have only ever worked a standard Monday through Friday job in the UK. My familiarity is with UK working culture, and it's bizarre to think that I would likely feel like an outsider in my own country's culture.

This isn't just an update about our migration plans. I acknowledge that only a couple of you have been marking my whereabouts with drawing pins connected with string on a large map on the walls of your living rooms. All of this talk of living here, living there, and all points in between makes me worry that I am a bit too migratory for my own good. Will I ever settle down and believe that I want to stay in that place?

I didn't have a transient childhood - we moved to a different local school district when I was 11, and that was it. Due to money issues and my Dad siphoning my college fund to support his drinking and gambling, I had to stay at home while I went to university. Toward the end of my studies I was desperate to the point of insanity to get out of the town in which I grew up, and I moved to the UK after graduation.

In the nearly seven years that we've been here, we've always had this goal of living in our ideal house in the perfect location. In the first couple years that could have been in the UK, until reality set in and it occurred to us that we could never have that life here barring a large financial windfall or 24 hour prostitution. After that, Canada came into the picture. The rambling house on the fringes of suburbia started to take shape, and my chickens called Ted and Dot became a realistic possibility. So much of our lives in the past seven years has been, "When we have our proper house..."

I've reached a point now where I desperately need to get out. I want that life now, in Canada or the US, and though for years I was content to cheerily say, "We'll have that one day!" Polyanna has done packed her bags and hopped on the earliest red-eye. I'm nearly 31 folks, I ain't getting any younger.

Now I'm concerned that this next step, if it takes place, will still not be enough. Am I always chasing a perceived happiness which isn't remotely steeped in reality? I know it's not all about material goods, and honestly, what makes me look forward to this hoped-for future is that P will have a big yard to run around in, trees to climb, outdoor toys to play with, and a house big enough that she isn't always in the same room as her parents. Here she lives on the top floor of our building, has no garden, and can only spend time in one of a few rooms. This poor kid strokes out when a friend of hers produces a bike and rides it around an open space. It's a completely foreign concept for her, the poor mite.

I hope you're still reading a couple of years from now when I'm ensconsed in my nice house, airing my firmly middle class concerns like the irritating prat that I am. I just hope I don't get pregnant before then - my only reader will be my brother. Can you imagine the embarrassment...

Music Monday: Partay

2009-04-06T22:42:00.005+01:00

Because there ain't no party like a Scranton party (or in the case of my own geographical origin - Harrisburg), this week I'm talking about the Guardian's list of party music. There will be no Abba or shit like that here - this isn't a hen night at a dodgy pub. Rock on. All summaries are those of The Guardian, not my own. Sadly.

The B-52's: Love Shack

"A seemingly effortless meld of Don Was’s slick big-band production, Fred Schneider’s fairground bark, the piping harmonies of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson and the dirty blues guitar of Keith Strickland, Love Shack gave the B-52’s their first mainstream hit more than a decade into their career. Inspired by the cabin in Athens, Georgia, where the band wrote their early songs, it was a tribute to original guitarist Ricky Wilson who died of Aids-related illnesses in 1985."

Next was going to be the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)", but it seems YouTube does not think I can watch ANY version of this video. At all. Oh well, you know what this sounds like anyway, right?

David Bowie: Let's Dance

"Few people know more about making people dance than Nile Rodgers. As the guitarist in Chic, he helped write and produce some of the best songs of the disco era, including Everybody Dance, Le Freak and Good Times. No surprise then that when David Bowie asked Rodgers to produce his second album of the 80s, it resulted in a dancefloor gem. The clipped bass, rhythmic guitar chops and rising chants that telegraph the chorus work in any setting, from wedding discos to fashionable east London bars."

Johnny Cash: Cocaine Blues

"If you believe that violent and amoral lyrics were invented by rockers or rappers, this stunning proto-gangsta stomp will be a shock to your system. TJ “Red” Arnall’s 1947 western swing standard is the testimony of Willy Lee, who, high on coke and whiskey, shoots his woman and fails to escape justice. Cash’s Folsom Prison concert version is legendary, but The Man in Black is outdone by one Billy Hughes, whose 1947version is utterly remorseless."

Depeche Mode: Just Can't Get Enough

"No matter how inventive the rearrangement, how annoying the charity cover version or how ubiquitous its appearance in advertising makes it, there’s no escaping the pure pop thrill of new-wave veterans Depeche Mode’s naive, breakthrough single, the final contribution from early songwriter Vince Clarke (before leaving to form Yazoo and later Erasure) and an anthem in British gay clubs ever since."

Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

"Chas Jankel’s musical nous and Ian Dury’s wordsmithery combine to perfection on this blast of brilliant nonsense that sold nearly a million on its initial release. The music is a thick funk gumbo (largely down to Norman Watt-Roy’s heavy, busy bassline) as Dury rhymes the likes of “Borneo” with “Bordeaux”, “Eskimo” with “Arapaho” and “Milan” with “Yucatan” before breaking into the gloriously nutty chorus. Davey Payne’s double saxophone break is manic; the Blockheads never hit these heights again."

Flight of the Conchords: Think About It (What is Wrong With the World Today)

"In which the peerless Kiwi “digi-folk” duo pay homage to a certain strain of “protest song” – the vague, directionless, apolitical soul ballad exemplified by Buffalo Springfield, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, the Stylistics and any number of acid jazz copyists. As FOTC describe an inner-city dystopia where kids are “killing each other with knives and forks” and “getting diseases from monkeys” over the chords from Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), it’s clear that they’re actually rather good blue-eyed soul crooners."

House of Pain: Jump Around

"Irish-American rappers House of Pain always played second fiddle to west-coast contemporaries Cypress Hill, who never fashioned anything as great as Jump Around. From the fanfare that launched a thousand cannabis habits to the squeal that ushers in every jump (sampled from Prince’s Gett Off), it united college halls and rock clubs long after they sank into insignificance."

The Libertines: Can't Stand Me Now

"From a poetic point of view, the release of Can’t Stand Me Now could not have been more perfect. From an intra-band harmony perspective, it couldn’t have been worse. Released just as Pete Doherty and Carl Barât’s tumultuous relationship was beginning to finally fall apart due to Doherty’s drug habit, you can hear the spite in the love me/hate me lyrics. A No 2 hit at the time, it remains the most famous mission statement from the London could-have-beens."

MGMT: Kids

"Brooklyn-based duo MGMT emerged in 2007 with an intoxicating blend of squelching electro-funk, wiggy progisms and 70s pop-rock sensibilities. Produced by Flaming Lips associate Dave Fridmann, Kids remains their signature tune; its mix of gurgling synths, pounding drum machines and make-believe lyrics overcoming hints of hipster irony to rock harder than a Shoreditch warehouse party. Much to the band’s chargrin, the track was recently appropriated by French premier Nicolas Sarkozy for use at political rallies."

Pulp: Sorted for E's and Wizz (if you want to know more about Pulp, come and ask - I'm an expert)

"The ultimate after-the-Britpop-party anthem, as Jarvis Cocker and co steal the melody of Leo Sayer’s Moonlighting and define the dark side of drugs, festivals and coming down. The Mirror got itself in a tizz about the single sleeve that explained how to make a drug wrap, but if they’d listened they would have heard one of the most despairing of all drug anthems, with its pensive acknowledgment that communal highs are always followed by private lows."

Jackie Wilson: Your Love

"Originally unable to nail the vocal track, Wilson was instructed by producer Carl Davis to “jump and go along with the percussion”. It worked a treat. In perhaps the most joyous two and a half minutes ever committed to tape, Wilson – backed by members of the Funk Brothers – builds Higher and Higher up into a crescendo of gospel-inspired ecstasy, capturing the optimism and seemingly endless possibilities of new-found love."

And just for fun...

Cameo: Word Up

A walk in my shoes

2009-04-05T20:43:00.011+01:00

I wanted to do a post about serious issues, but this time it's nausea rather than tiredness acting as my foil. I think I'm either pregnant or dying, and as I'm an infertile who doesn't have sex, I think I know which is more likely. Anyway, I swear I have some good posts coming, not that it matters since most of you Bloglines kids haven't been told of my existence in months. Fucking thing.

Today P and I visited friends, and on the way home we passed an old cemetery that I've never actually explored despite my reformed Goth leanings. Fog was settling, so I did what any good ex-Goth would do and whipped out my camera. P was slightly intrigued, but got distracted when I wouldn't keep turning left as per her demands. For your (hopeful) enjoyment, here are some of the photos. Can it get more British than this, I ask you?

And because life knew I had a camera to document this, I present:

Real things soon, I promise.

Time-sinks

2009-04-01T21:53:00.004+01:00

Rather than doing something constructive with my much-needed spare internet time such as commenting on your blogs, I have been doing idle, fluffy internet things. I have such grand notions of sitting down at the computer and leisurely strolling through my Google Reader feeds, but I have no coherent thoughts bubbling up in this tiny mind of mine. I can read, but as for coming up with something worthy to say - no chance. The feeds are all there, unread, waiting for me to be inspired at some point.

It seems I am so arrogant as to believe you are hanging on my every word, desperately wanting to find out where I go when I'm avoiding being a good member of blogging society. I'll tell you, because though I have a few posts swimming around in my head, I think all that would come out is a Liz Lemonesque, "BLURGH".

In no particular order:

1) What Would Tyler Durden Do

I happen to think my brother is the blogger behind this hilarious gossip site, so familiar are some of his phrasings. I'm sure some of you would find him crude and most inappropriate, but I myself am often crude and inappropriate.

2) Curious Expeditions

I happened upon this site, perhaps via Molly, when we were looking for library porn. Yes, there is such a thing, and while reading the post I had to change my underwear three times. Please see above, "crude and inappropriate".

This blog isn't usually about libraries - its object is to find the strange and unusual sites in the world, and you wouldn't believe what's out there. Prepare yourselves to get lost in this website for awhile.

3) Craftastrophe

Admittedly, this is a new fixation since I didn't know about this site until they started following me on Twitter. Etsy lovers will probably find it particularly funny. I mean, really (and also because I have always hated the word "moist", particularly in conjunction with "chunks")...

4) Postcards from Yo Momma

I only "found" this site last week, but good god is it funny. Readers submit funny texts/emails/IMs with their mothers, and it has made me realise that there must be a universal motherism because so many of them are totally my own Mom. I'm tempted to submit the conversation I had with my Mom when she told me about a movie she saw the night before - she couldn't remember the title or even what it was about, but she knew she really liked it and that Keri Russell was in it. Yes, it was The Waitress. That being the only thing Keri Russell has really done since Felicity, which my Mom never watched. Somehow she had little recollection of the film she greatly enjoyed, but she did remember the random B (C?) list actress that a lot of people, particularly those of her generation, wouldn't be familiar with at all. Anyway, mothers...comedy fodder for sure.

5) Lovely Listing

Some of you may know of my love of real estate. If I tell you that I can spend three hours on real estate sites no problem, please don't laugh. It's an addiction, and it needs fed. This is why I find Lovely Listing so hilarious. It features reader submissions of photos from real estate websites that perhaps should have never been published. Ever. I have often wondered why, in trying to sell a house, a realtor thinks that showing a photograph of a bloke sitting in a chair, or a cat on a table is in anyway relevant. Prepare yourselves - this one will keep you busy for awhile. Not only are the photos worth a visit, but the write-ups are witty and clever too.

My life is making me feel like road kill on a sweltering day, so I'm going to stop interneting and go to bed. I hope you don't get too carried away with my links as well!

Music Monday: Heartbreak

2009-03-30T21:13:00.002+01:00

Here I am, week three of focusing on the Guardian list. Yes, I lack originality, and I'm never very good at coming up with songs which fit a certain theme. Molly has now sworn off blogging altogether thanks to the rather...tepid response to her music about The Secks. Poor dear has retreated into absolute seclusion, stroking her budding creole tomatoes and trimming her newly sprouted herbs. "Blogging be damned!" she is heard to shout, shaking her tiny fists toward the forboding cajun skies. Poor dear.

In view of last week, this theme of heartbreak is for Molly, who no doubt if asked for her own contribution for this week would suggest her favourite ever song, "Achy Breaky Heart" by beloved, formerly bemulleted Billy Ray Cyrus. I, however, will be selecting more refined songs, thank you very much.

The Boy Done Wrong Again: Belle and Sebastian

Flume: Bon Iver

Lua: Bright Eyes

I Still Miss Someone: Johnny Cash (because there was always going to be Cash)

Crazy: Patsy Cline

Katie Cruel: Karen Dalton

Killing Moon: Echo and the Bunnymen

How Do You Mend a Broken Heart: Al Green

Devil Got My Woman: Skip James

Love Will Tear Us Apart: Joy Division

Let Me Down Easy: Bettye Lavette

Blue Monday: New Order

Crying: Roy Orbison

Jolene: Dolly Parton

I Know It's Over: The Smiths

Dry Your Eyes: The Streets

Use Me: Bill Withers

I hope you are sufficiently cheered up now.

Guest Post: MuSex Monday

2009-03-23T14:50:00.003Z

Hi friends. It's Molly. Remember me? I used to, um, blog?

To get back into the swing of things, your favorite sassy redheaded librarian invited herself to blog here on Music Monday. Perhaps I’ll post on my own blog sometime too! Don’t get your hopes up. I am very lazy.

As Ms. Pru mentioned in her last Music Monday post, The Guardian is publishing its list of 1000 Songs Everyone Must Hear. The list is largely Brit-centric (I mean, I’m sure there are a few Americans who adore the band Elbow, but, you know) but there are some fabulous songs on there. My favorite of which have to be the Sex Songs. Surprised?

I’ll begin with the best -- if you listen to no other songs on this list, listen to this one. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the sexiest song I have ever heard in my life. (If there are young children about, you may want to pop on headphones. Though it may be interesting to hear your reply to “why that nice lady is making those strange noises?”) Serge Gainsbourg originally recorded this song with Brigitte Bardot – this recording is with his wife, Jane Birkin.

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OK, calm down, girls. How about a bit of classic bluesy-smut from Ms. Bessie Smith. “He was a deep sea diver with a stroke that could not go wrong.” Atta girl. Recorded in 1928, when Smith was at the height of her popularity.

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Mmmm hmmm.

Now, I love Moulin Rouge! as much as the next guy, but having Xtina and Pink (ugh) pounded in to my head for years afterwards has nearly obliterated the awesome original version of LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade” from my head. I don’t think I realized that the lyrics said “Creole Lady Marmalade” until after I had moved to Louisiana and actually knew what a Creole was. You need to watch this, if only to see the costumes.

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And now, Etta James. Listen to the edge of ferocity and drip of sex in her voice. She was 22 when she made this recording.

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I was surprised to see Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” on the list, until I read this description: “Richard Penniman was an undistinguished R&B shouter when he began recording with Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. When their session was going badly, the assembled went to a nearby bar and the openly gay singer entertained them with a ribald ditty about the benefits of applying grease before attempting anal sex. Blackwell heard gold, got Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the lyrics, and Little Richard unleashed the screams that forever define the polymorphous perversity of rock’n’roll.”

I assure you, you will never hear “Tutti Frutti” the same way again.

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Because I am Molly, you’re not getting out of here without any Barbra. This is actually the only Barbra song of the whole 1000 (which is slightly baffling to me. Not even “Evergreen?” “People?”), and while I don’t think there’s anything overtly sexy about this song, there are ear-boxing shoulderpads and Barry Gibb with a mullet and pointy boots, and if those don’t suggest sex, then I don’t know what does.

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Having said all of this, there are a few notable omissions from the Sex list. I think both Ms. Pru and I would agree that any sex list should really include N*E*R*D’s “LapDance.” Raunchy all around, from the lyrics to the guitar riff. I love that the youTube description on this one is simply: “hottest song to strip to.” I’m a dirty dog, indeed.

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And one last song that should be there, but isn’t: Flight of the Conchords, “Sugalumps.” This song is in my head constantly. So are Jemaine’s sugalumps, incidentally.

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What do you think, ladies? What are the sexiest songs ever?

Mother's Day Questionnaire (madness ensues)

2009-03-22T19:00:00.005Z

A friend tagged me on Facebook for this, but as I'm a complete Facebook moron, I can't figure out how to post it there - HA! I'm only used to typing in a brief status report, a la Twitter. Anything which requires a bit more know how is lost on me.

This is a little thing which I believe made the rounds in bloglandia before Facebook was even a glint in its creator's beady little eye. If you see I have finally managed to get this on Facebook, please don't mention the blog since those worlds should not collide. I will warn you that this questionnaire is like being dragged into a Doors song - the psychedelia is powerful in this one.

Incidentally, this totally makes me a vital part of the STFU Parents' main agenda. I find this website hilarious despite my complete complicity in what they are railing against. Ah well.

1. What is something mom always says to you? "Don't know."

2. What makes mom happy? (showed me her empty plate)

3. What makes mom sad? (made a sad face)

4. How does your mom make you laugh? (grins)

5. What was your mom like as a child? "Confused face." Oh child, if you only knew

6. How old is your mom? "3."

7. How tall is your mom? "BIG, and I'm your little girl."

8. What is her favorite thing to do? "Shopping."

9. What does your mom do when you're not around? "School." News to me.

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? "Umm...THOMAS!" As in Thomas the Tank Engine, whom I have never impersonated.

11. What is your mom really good at? "Potty sweets." What a contribution to society - I am good at dispensing jellybeans when my child goes on the potty.

12. What is your mom not very good at? "Confused face." I happen to think I make one hell of a confused face.

13. What does your mom do for her job? "I don't like it." Me neither kid, me neither.

14. What is your mom's favorite food? "Chips and peas." Again, I had no idea this was anywhere close to my favourite food. I don't even eat peas.

15. What makes you proud of your mom? "I am proud of you."

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? "A goodie."

17. What do you and your mom do together? "Shopping, sticking."

18. How are you and your mom the same? "goodie."

19. How are you and your mom different? "Ladybird, ladybird, ladybird, ladybird."

20. How do you know your mom loves you? "No, not pimp." Do not ask me how she knows this word. She hasn't watched Jerry Springer in days.

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? "Simpsons."

Just as guidance, though she said "confused face" rather than making one, this is her actual confused face:

I happen to think it's a bit more, "Bitch, please!" myself, but one toddler's confused face is another toddler's bitchface.

Stay tuned in the next day for the guest Music Monday posting from Molly, the best blogger who never actually blogs.

Materfamilias

2009-03-20T23:11:00.004Z

Mother's Day is on Sunday here, which has just reminded me that I need to buy a card in preparation for American Mother's Day, whenever that may be. I lack preparedness in every possible way, so quite often I find the US date approaching rapidly and realise I have no card to give my Mom. Now at least I have a small person with access to crayons and paper, so I could just put her to work on crafting one I suppose. Don't worry, her labour would not go unrecognised. I would pay her in at least six stones and ten rubber bands. It may not sound like much, but this kid's utopia would be formed of stones, rubber bands, shells and tampons still in their packaging (green ones preferred).

Anyway, I'm not here to wax lyrical on my role as a mother, nor am I going to craft a loving ode to my own mother. Ok, I am going to talk about my Mom, because lately her eccentricities have given me cause to acknowledge her idiosyncratic brilliance, but it won't be cheesy. I can't write emotional stuff for anything.

I've blogged about my Mom's...uniqueness in the past, though I'm currently too lazy to link to it. Regular readers will know of what I speak. I talk to her regularly and often make mental notes to tell others of her oddness, because sometimes it really must be shared with the world. For example:

-Last weekend she got in a tiff with a woman at an antiques auction. The woman's pre-teen son sat in my Mom's friend's chair when she got up to use the restroom. My Mom explained to the kid that her friend was sitting there, and he would need to move upon her return. He didn't, she asked him to move again, and he declined. My Mom loudly proclaimed to her friend, "It's a shame people don't raise their children to have any manners these days!" This raised the ire of the child's mother, who got indignant with my Mom and ended up storming off in a huff after a wee shouting match. I warned my Mom that as we are from Central PA that she'll piss off the wrong gun-toter one day with that big gob of hers, but she has no concerns in this regard.

-What is the best way to recover from a day in which you get confrontational when surrounded by Victoriana? Obviously you, a nearly 60 year old woman accompanied by your 60+ friend, hitchhike. It seems they couldn't get to the auction location of their choice, so my Mom jotted down the name of the destination town on a bit of paper and stood by the side of the road. I was worried that she was so fueled by adrenalin and filled with passion for antiquities that she hopped into a big rig with a mustachioed trucker, but thankfully she did not. Her ride was a couple of nice middle-aged ladies, one of whom was Amish, because - why not? Again, Central PA, of course the Amish were involved at some point.

-My Mom is a dog lover. She has three, one of whom is a Great Pyrenees. This thing is her baby, and he is like a volunteer of the year. Senior citizens, children, midgets, all benefit from his philanthropy. Tomorrow, I shit you not, he is marching in a local St Patrick's Day Parade. She even said the word "marching" in all seriousness, and made sure to tell P about this upcoming event. Not only is he marching in a parade, he's wearing this, a gen-u-wine Irish flat cap:

Yes, srsly. As I was reliably informed tonight, it will be affixed to his head with bobby pins. It was a lucky escape dog - you were very close to being dyed green, but the fear was that the fading green would appear too "dingy" on your brilliantly white coat. When you're as busy campaigning for Canine of the Year you mustn't be any less than your best!

Happy Mother's Day Mom, you crazy old bitch. The world would be a much more boring place without you.

*******************************

In very non-Momish vibe, I have a guest blogger for this week's Music Monday, and her theme will be songs about the secks. I'll give you a hint - she's a sassy, sexy redhead librarian down in the Bayou. I bet you have no idea who it could be...

Anatomy of a Day

2009-03-16T21:24:00.002Z

This post serves no purpose beyond my attempt at drumming up sympathy and to wallow in self-pity. So you know, FUN!

6am: Alarm goes off, signalling the start of the last hours The Dude will have the right hip he was born with. I intend to go back to sleep, but...

6.15am: She awakens, shouting, "I am stuck in my bed!" She wasn't. She was, however, awake for good. Shit.

6.30am: The Dude leaves, on foot. I don't drive, and obviously he can't drive to his own hip replacement. The logistics are frightening and will be explored later, as will The Dude's family's complete ignorance of manners and reciprocity.

7am: Feed P porridge for breakfast, do dishes. Feeling oddly productive.

8am: Prepare P for school, which includes medicating her busted toe and applying a Spongebob band-aid. P rebels, bumps Easter Island head on my cheekbone, causing my sinuses to explode all over the lounge in a mess of snot and the bull weevils which have surely been burrowing into my head for the past week and a half.

9am: Make appointment to see a nurse at my GP surgery to get blessed relief from sinusitis limbo. Told no appointments exist for today, yet 10 seconds later, one does. Hmm...

9.30pm: Drop P off at nursery, walk to GP surgery for 10am appointment.

10am: Already out of appointment, clutching prescription for antibiotic which I desperately hope will be my savior. Walk to high street for prescription filling and purchasing diversions for the patient. Buy three magazines with a distinct male-focus, and bow the pressure of three books for myself at a charity shop (Crimson Petal and the White, Middlsex, and The Little Friend, if anyone's interested).

11.30am: Walk from high street to ferry port. Yes, you read that correctly. I have to get a mothertrucking ferry to go see The Dude at the hospital. This follows the 2 mile walk I have already undertaken to get to this point. The ferry takes all of 5 minutes. I wonder what the point is.

12pm: Reach hospital resembling a Victorian asylum after walking a further 3/4 mile post-ferry. Legs ponder rebellion due to week-long atrophy through disuse thanks to sinusitis infestation. Decide that inflexible Rocketdogs may not be the best choice in hiking footwear.

Go to the recovery ward, no husband to be found. Instructed by pissed off nurse to wait in the "Day area" - a place where light always shines regardless of hour? I don't know. It has some tatty old chairs, so I sit down and read a Total Film magazine. Old git with very few teeth shuffles in and phones his wife on his mobile. Loudly. Apologises to me post-phone call for interrupting my reading. I kick him in his good hip and go to find lunch.

12.30pm: Lunch is a cheese and onion sandwich from the hospital shop. Sit on bench in lovely courtyard gardens of at-places ruinous looking hospital. Try husband-seeking mission again.

12.45pm: Pissed off nurse number two tells me to go away and have lunch and then come back to look for missing husband. I wander the labyrinthian corridors again, never seeing one person, wondering if I'm stuck in some sort of localised 28 Days Later situation. Periodically stop to read plaques detailing the numerous 18th and early 19th century mass graves on site. Somehow, I find this endearing and suddenly the hospital is way cooler than originally thought. Talk to brother on mobile in courtyard from earlier, wondering how many old soldiers I'm trodding on as I'm speaking to my sibling from 4000 miles away.

2pm: Head back to ward. No Dude. Wondering if they just decided to do both hips since the other one is shit anyway. Sit back in the Day Room, sans toothless old guy. Stroke my new book purchases.

2.15pm: Nurse 1, spirits doubtlessly buoyed by depriving patients of morphine, pops her head into my room of endless light to say that The Dude has officially arrived.

I expect to see a wan, near-lifeless version of my husband in the bed. Instead I'm greeted by full-on Dude, albeit it very slightly high. He tells me that he was out during his surgery despite the lack of a general anesthesia, which I find a bit confusing. He is oddly jovial, and I fear for him once the epidural wears off.

4pm: I depart, as P needs collected from nursery as I have a long commute ahead of me. He promises to call later in the evening once the pain kicks in, and settles down with an MMA DVD on his portable DVD player.

4.15pm: Another 3/4 mile later, and I'm back on the ferry.

4.20pm: Reach the other side and decide that I deserve a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Any guilt is alleviated courtesy of a card I possess which gives me a free cup of coffee every day after 1pm. I revel in my power.

5pm: After a further 2+ mile walk, I reach P's nursery. She is happy to see me, patting my face and yelling, "FACE! FACE! THIS IS YOUR FACE!!"

5.15pm: We reach home, and within five minutes I am treated to both P peeing on the floor and a subdued phone call from The Dude groaning about THE PAIN ending with him hanging up on me so he could throw up. In the rushed phone call I understood that he could feel both of his legs and that was no good thing. The morphine, as he predicted, was alleviating the pain but making him repeatedly sick. This is not a phone call a worrier should get, especially a worrier who hasn't had relief from a constant sinus headache in four days. And this, my friends, is how you make your husband's painful hip replacement all.about.you.

7.30pm: P's bedtime. I love this child more than a fine cheese, but toddlerdom is not great when your head is splitting in half.

8pm: Spoke a few words to Molly on Gmail chat, then drew my bath. Added new Lush product, lit a candle, and prepared Cat's Eye for some heavy reading.

9pm: Got out of blissful bath and ran upstairs to catch the newest episode of America's Next Top Model. We're still a season behind, so no spoilers please.

10pm: Not sure. It's 11pm now, what did I watch for an hour?

11pm: Confused, head throbbing, ready to go to bed. SVU has other ideas, the conniving bastard.

Yeah, so that was dreadful for pretty much everyone for me, sorry about that. I wanted to go through that just to get to my main point - that of The Dude's family and their complete disregard for common decency. The Dude had to wake up dreadfully early, walk to the bus stop, get the bus to the ferry, cross the water in said ferry, walk 3/4 mile to the hospital, all before 7am! To get his fucking hip replaced! Do you think anyone in his family offered to drive the poor soul? No, no, too much trouble.

The Dude has a close-knit family , though obviously that doesn't extend to favours. We often loan money to his parents and two sisters, and it isn't a problem. They pay us back when they can and that's that. We also go out of our way to help with anything else they might need help with because that's what families do. At least, that's what one part of the family does.

Both of his sisters have kids, but if the situation were reversed we would find someone to get P to school so that they could be driven to the hospital for their major surgery. Speaking of which, not only did no one offer to drop The Dude off at the hospital, no one suggested that they drop P off at school so I could go with him. I would do this for an acquaintance I don't know that well, let alone family.

Is this only shocking to me? Am I far more versed in the arts of Emily Post than I thought? Fretting about it is only going to make my headache worse, so I trust you'll all just agree with me for the sake of argument. We wouldn't want my eyeballs to pop out from all the pressure now would we?

Music Monday: Listen here before you die

2009-03-15T21:53:00.003Z

Ok, I've given up on the notion of reader requests for the moment since it's hard to do a post about reader requests when only two readers request something. Ahem. Last time I was inundated, this time, not so much. I actually have more readers than I did then, but that does not translate to people wanting their music put up on this here blog. Ah well. Two people - I'll save your music recommendations for next time, whenever I'm bold enough to do this again.

I was going to make this a Music Monday with The Dude's music, but upon further reflection realised that his music is shit. I'm on board with Madness, Bjork and Nirvana but it all goes downhill from there - Phil Collins, Sugababes, Will Young, and any adult contemporary ballads from the 80s and 90s. It's gross.

As serendipity would have it, yesterday The Guardian published a series entitled "1000 Songs Everyone Must Hear", with a focus on love songs. I thought I'd completely pilfer their list for songs that I, and in some cases, The Dude, like. Admittedly this is a list whereby the insinuation is that the music is of a certain quality, thus excluding The Dude's kind of music, but I may be surprised as I proceed. A lot of these are old school, but as there isn't much like that on Music Monday, all the better.

Badly Drawn Boy: The Shining

Funny story about BDB - a friend of mine went to see him in concert years ago and he was insanely drunk. Much heckling insued and he ended up shouting at the crowd to fuck off. Haha. You wouldn't think the writer of such a song would be that...mercurial.

The Beach Boys featured heavily on this list, what with Pet Sounds widely accepted as one of the best albums ever. I could have chosen "God Only Knows" (which makes me think of Big Love)or "Good Vibrations", and though I wanted to pick "Don't Worry Baby", it wasn't on the list. Instead, I'll settle for "Wouldn't It Be Nice".

Beach Boys: Wouldn't It Be Nice

I have a confession to make. I don't really like The Beatles. Sacrilege, I know. I'm sorry, I don't really get the hype. I was ready to leave them out of this list, but I live in England and all that, so here we go.

The Beatles: Something

Because I cannot possibly not include Johnny Cash...

Johnny Cash: I Walk the Line

Uh, and you might as well know that I can't resist a song featuring both Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. I was going to just put up the Dylan version of "Girl From the North Country", but I was swayed so easily. Sorry.

Bob Dylan feat. Johnny Cash: Girl From the North Country

Ella Fitzgerald: Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye (starts at 3.40)

I don't care what anyone says - I friggin love Ms Dolly Parton. I also genuinely like "I Will Always Love You", despite the ghastly Whitney version. So there.

Dolly Parton: I Will Always Love You

Sweet baby jee, I love this song. You're obviously a freak if you don't.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: You've Really Got a Hold On Me

Though there are other songs on the list from "Dirty Dancing", I didn't want to assume that everyone else felt the same way about that AWESOME film that I do.

Ronettes: Be My Baby

Did you know this next one was written by Carole King? I can't reconcile the Motown thing with a singer/songwriter hippie sound a la Carole King. Hmph.

The Shirelles: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Has anyone ever seen Phil Hartman's impression of Sinatra on SNL? Hilarious stuff. I think of it every time I watch a Sinatra performance.

Frank Sinatra: Fly Me to the Moon

I was once friends with this snobby playwright-to-be who is now apparently taking certain parts of the theatrical world by storm. It seems His Highness finds himself to be a bit above me now, having rejected a previous friend request on a social networking site which shall remain nameless. Anyway, he always made fun of me for liking this song, but hey ho. Fuck him and his affected British-lite accent (you're from New Jersey mate, get over yourself). Moving on...

Paul Weller: You Do Something to Me

As I'm a wee bit obsessed with Neil Young at the moment, it only makes sense that I should include him here since he's on the list. I know I had this song on a previous Music Monday, but what of it?

Neil Young: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Because I'm all about opening up my heart to you folks, I present to you "our song". It's not on the list, but it damn well should be.

Gene: Speak to Me Someone

What our your (ie, the two or three vocal ones) favourite love songs?

Charity begins at home

2009-03-13T22:46:00.003Z

As those of you in the UK will know, today is Comic Relief/Red Nose Day. Non UK residents, this occurance is still somewhat of a mystery to me, but essentially it's a large fundraising event which melds comedy and general wackyness with public awareness of various charitable organisations. I find it all a bit self-congratulatory and annoyingly trite, particularly when the celebrities involved act as if their contribution will change the world, £10 at a time.

People do strange things on Red Nose Day, such as shaving their heads, wearing pyjamas to work, bathing in baked beans, all to raise money for the charity. Obviously I support anything which raises such a large sum of money (currently nearly £33m/$46m USD) but I can't help thinking such events quickly turn gimmicky and tacky.

P's responsibility today was to wear something "funny", the concept of which is a bit vague for toddlers I think. For lack of a better idea, our first and only idea was that she could dress as Upsy Daisy, her favourite character from the BBC children's programme "In the Night Garden". Don't ask me what this has to do with raising money for children in Africa, because I have no idea. It doesn't really matter though when you're this friggin' cute.

I'm terrified that this is my baby. Who is this child-like pod person? I guess I didn't tell her that she's not allowed to grow up.

Speaking of charities (I warned you I would bring this up again), I am running a 10K in July for Cancer Research UK. Running an official 10K has been my goal since I started my exercise programme, so this will allow me to realise it. I, like most people, have lost family members to cancer, so this charity couldn't be more appropriate. I have a little donate button on the sidebar, and anyone, in the UK, US, Zimbabwe, or Vanuatu can contribute. I know these are difficult times, so any donation is very welcome. I'm not very good at begging, but I intentionally set my goal low (£100) and I don't really want my only sponsors to be myself and my Mom. As I mentioned, the run isn't until July, so the button will be sticking around. If you have a little extra money sitting around some month before that, please keep me in mind. I'm even planning on putting pre and post-race photos up on this here blog. I suspect I will regret being so bold.

Changing subjects entirely, I think I may be slowly perishing from this sinus infection from the depths of hell, so I'm desperate for some relief. My Mom can't shut up about neti pots, but as they aren't readily available here I'll have to order one off these here interwebs. Do any of you have opinions on these little aladdin's lamps of sinus relief?

In absence of a neti pot or scythe with which to decapitate myself, I shall now retire to my bed with a jug of Nyquil. Godspeed.

Pox on this House

2009-03-11T09:53:00.014Z

If you've only read about my current sickness on here and have not had to suffer my constant Twitter updates a la "MAH BRAIN IS COMING OUT MY NOSE!" and "THE BIGGEST LOSER MAKES ME WARM DOWN THERE!", consider yourselves lucky. Twitter is the devil when you're home sick three days in a row with a laptop adhered to your person.

All of us are at various stages of illness. I've got this creeping crud of unknown origins, The Dude has a variation of it which occasionally renders him unable to do anything but complain about how very ill he is (so, status quo), and P has the ever-constant runny nose and cough with the pleasant addition of a funky, diseased big toe. I took her to the doctor yesterday because I had nightmares of it swelling from infection and the poor mite having to live the rest of her life with elephantitis of the toe. "Magic" cream was prescribed, and upon returning her to nursery her teacher went through a litany of reasons P may have gone to the doctor, none of which included a funky toe. I guess it just goes to show that my child is a walking ball of eleventybillion kinds of lurg.

We all deal with sickness differently. This is my way, with my anonymity maintained thanks to a filthy as hell mirror. Yes, I'm clutching a tissue, talking to my Mom on the phone, and taking a photo. Us women are such multi-taskers, eh? Also, helloooooo titties!

This is P's way:

The Dude, bless him, does sound a bit rough, but dude, suck it up. As we were going to bed the other night he said, "Oh no. I feel the shivers coming on." Yawn, but also, HAHAHAHA! He does get the shivers when he has a cold, and let me tell you, it is goddamn hilarious. I should feel pity, but instead I lay in the bed trying not to laugh. The next morning he expressed much relief that the shivers did not materialise this time, as if a biopsy had just come back negative. Dodged a bullet there, phew!

I suppose I should be a sympathetic wife at some stage. The Dude is having his hip replaced next Monday thanks to a bastard inherited degenerative disease and I will be attentive and sympathetic as a good partner would be. This time next Monday his leg will be placed up by his head whilst his hip is replaced - and he will be awake for that lovely demonstration of things-which-should-never-happen-in-a-world. His recuperation period is about two months, so any advice (or good wishes)regarding what will essentially be single parenthood is much appreciated. Let me just remind you, that is single parenthood of a very spirited two year old.

Ever since The Dude's hips started to deteriorate he has struggled with this sort of ailment's association with advanced age. It is hard for a guy in his 30s to have the hips of someone twice his age, particularly as he used to be a very active, sporty person. With that said, by extension I'm a bit sensitive about the matter too, so please, no jokes about age-related issues. It's strange how people wouldn't mock a younger person with rheumatoid arthritis, but yet things like dodgy hips seem to be fair game. I don't imagine most people would be thrilled if they had to have two new hips by the age of 40.

Ok, with the serious stuff out of the way, would you like to see the spoils of his surgery? God bless the NHS, as we get TWO free elevated chairs, a raised toilet seat, and something I can only think to call a grabber. Given the age-related fears he has, a raised toilet seat is not his favourite item. I don't think he was thrilled with me when I left it in the building's lobby with our surname emblazoned on it when it was delivered yesterday. It's heavy, and I'm ill! Cough.

The gang, just chilling by the window on a late winter's day.

Raised toilet seat kicking it gangsta style, sporting this season's hottest "plastic wrap chic" look.

Last night I was frightened by a lone chair sitting in the dark, pondering. I was waiting for a disembodied voice to start shrieking at me, and thought I'd stumbled into an abandoned asylum.

Here is the grabber, utilised to do the housework and to fetch my much-needed tissues.

Because no surgery would be complete without a nifty booklet on what to do and not do...

Butt clenching, ahoy! In case you don't know how to clench your "bottom", here are some arrows to show you how. Also, isn't it "glutes"?

Because you've not been through enough with the hip replacement, they're only going to take it from you in the middle of the night anyway, the bastids.

And finally, don't do this after a hip operation. My personal opinion is that if you're doing this at any point, you've got issues.

Music Monday: In Absentia

2009-03-09T14:21:00.002Z

I see how it is. Two weeks ago, I gave you a challenge, simply asking you to email me some requests for Music Monday, and I didn't receive a single request! How is that possible? I have maybe six, seven readers, surely at least one of you can think of something. With that said, we will have to wait for another couple of weeks for the Reader Request Music Monday theme, and hopefully I'll have something then.

I'll stop being the mean old school marm now. However, I won't be doing a Music Monday today because I am not a well woman. Listening to music and writing about it is going a bit above and beyond my limits right now, as I am likely slowly deteriorating from a deadly sinus infection. As I twittered earlier, I even had a bloody nose, the contents of which promptly went all over my white duvet and the laptop. Awesome. I'm assuming my second period of the month will start presently.

Since my brain is slowly leaking through my nose, I'm going to stick with the superficial today. No deep thoughts here today, since I doubt I could formulate any if I tried. I guess that watching Damages was probably not the best programme to watch on my sickbed, as my head hurts even more now thanks to its serpentine plot developments.

In some of my internet browsing time, I like to look on TMZ's "Where Are They Now?" feature. They find formerly famous people and show you whether time has been kind, or a bitch. I'm a nosy cow, so I enjoy features like this far more than is normal. It makes you realise how unrealistic people are - they completely tear apart celebrities who have not aged well, usually insinuating that plastic surgery should be had to lessen the wrinkles, but then shower others with accolades for not bowing to the evil pressures of surgery. Obviously, you can't win as you age. You get plastic surgery and you've sold out, pandering to the whims of the irrational standard of beauty, but if you don't, people have to point out what a wrinkly old hag you are.

Now that I'm on the wrong side of 30, my perspective on plastic surgery has changed somewhat. Having a baby and seeing how that changes your body so completely has also contributed no doubt. I have big old boobies, and as soon as those things start swinging low sweet chariot, shit's gonna change. I can't stand them as they are now, stupid lumps of fat always getting in my way. The saving grace is that they don't brush my knees, so if that happens, I will be sure to perk them up a bit.

I was talking with an ::ahem:: bloggy ::ahem:: friend the other day (I think you all know who, since I am widely perceived to have one friend), and we were talking about body parts as one ages. Said friend is worried about eye bags and jowls, which, if her assertation about pale people of Scots-Irish and German origin being more prone to such things is true, I am well and truly fucked. I'm not so much on the post-op feline look,so a full-on face lift frightens me. However, if I was looking down the barrel of a droopy face, anything could happen. Thanks ancestors!

As I confessed to this friend, my biggest vanity-related fear is...cankles. Good Lord do I fear the cankles. You know how early experiences frame future perceptions? Well, I had a teacher in fourth grade, Mrs Wetzel, and this woman had the cankleist cankles that ever cankled. She was a young, attractive woman, but sweet baby Jesus, the cankles. When we sat on the floor in front of her for storytime, all I could focus on was the fat ankles. I felt bad that despite her best attempts to be otherwise attractive, she had to lug those things around. She was thin, which to me is the most terrifying aspect of cankledom - you can weigh 100 pounds, but if the Fates of Genetics decide that cankles should be yours, they will be. This is the thought that keeps me awake at night. Added to that, as far as I know there is no plastic surgery for cankles, so if I woke up with them one morning, they would be with me for life. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I know you are a feminist-minded bunch. How does this sit with your views on plastic surgery for women? Do you think your idea of the price of vanity has changed as you've gotten older?

Budding Bibliophile

2009-03-05T19:48:00.015Z

My girl loves books. Since she was a wee little thing she expressed an interest in them. Books are an important thing to us, and apparently our family and friends as well, as P is the proud owner of at least 75 books. I have cleared her stock a few times to get rid of ones she is now too big for, and yet, she still has loads. Obviously, this is no bad thing.

Now we have reached a point at which she is branching into picture books. My baby is now too old for most board books, having already passed the "too old for cloth books" milestone ages ago. This is great though, since picture books are far more exciting and feature much greater illustrations, generally speaking. I used to work in the kids' section at Borders and often had to wipe drool off of some of the gorgeously illustrated books, I was so in awe of them.

When I say the kid is a reader, or rather, makes me a reader and herself a listener, I'm not kidding. This was tonight's list:

That's 18 books friends. Eighteen. I joked to Molly the other day that I was going to create a Goodreads* account for P. Upon further reflection, I do think it's a good idea. It will be a great way to keep track of what she has read and is currently reading. How very 21st century of us!

In reading these gallons and gallons of books, I've come to notice a disappointing theme - DEATH. These are toddlers for god's sake, do you really need to whip out the "d" word at every opportunity? My kid doesn't even know what that is yet, and I'd like to keep it that way for awhile. You want some proof?:

The book, The Selfish Crocodile

The gist is that this crocodile doesn't want the other animals frolicking in his river, the hateful bastard. Karma gives him a toothache, whereupon all the other animals are getting ready to dance on his grave:

That bird is a biiiitch!

The next, perhaps most depressing book is Gentle Giant Octopus. It was in the Information Books section for kids much older than my own, but she is obsessed with sea creatures and had to have it. Now she dispenses random pieces of octopus-related wisdom throughout the day like, "Octopuses don't have bones!" and "Octopuses have eight legs - called TENTACLES!"

The book focuses on the life journey of a female octopus. The tone of the book is that octopuses are magnificent creatures! They are so unique! Let us show you how! It gets a bit brutal at one point, with the octopus having a tentacle pinched by a crab, and another tentacle TORN OFF by a wolf eel. Quite rightly, P says, "Well, that's not very nice!" when we get to this part of the book. Thankfully the capture of this occasion is not too graphic:

The only problem is, this is all building up to the octopus' inevitable demise upon the birth of her children. Charming.

The picture isn't great, so in case you can't make sense of it, it says, "A gentle Giant Octopus shrinks in the shadows. Her life is over as their lives begin." You know, just a little light nighttime reading for the kids involving parental death! Twitterfolk were talking the other day about Disney films' obsession with the death of protagonists' parents, which apparently extends to (seemingly) harmless kids' books as well.

P also has a copy of "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". You don't need photos since I'm sure you know the song from your own childhood. Suffice it to say, each line ends with "Perhaps she'll DIE!" Why not? We're all going to die eventually anyway, so you might as well get used to the concept kiddies!

Perhaps a bit less forward with the concept of death and infirmity is Lucy Goosey -

Lucy Goosey strops because she doesn't want to migrate with her family. Her family pisses off without her, but then her Mum feels guilty and comes back. They have a heart to heart, and everything is honky dory again. They discuss their mutual love and Lucey the kid comes out with this nugget:

I'll transcribe due to my dodgy photography/flash issues -

"Will you always search for me?" asked Lucy Goosey
"Always," said her mother.
"Even when you're old?"
"Even when I'm old."
"When you're very old, said Lucy Goosey, you might lose your way and be scared."
"I might," said her mother

Hi Anne James, author of Lucy Goosey. Why don't you just rip out my heart with your bare hands before you stick the sharpened knife in it?

The other book issue I sometimes struggle with is innocuous language which I have chosen to make perverse. There's a lot more of it out there than you'd think. Ok, maybe I'm just looking for it. Yeah, that's probably more like it. C'mon though, check this out -

The first one is from The Selfish Crocodile, bounty of death and perversity that it is. Remember how the crocodile had a toothache? Well, a mouse comes to the rescue and pulls the bad tooth. Obviously.

There's nothing untoward there you say? The crocodile had a NICE JUICY NUT WAITING FOR HIM! A JUICY NUT.

This tale of nut lust continues...

Not only does the crocodile lure small mice into his mouth with the promise of some of his juicy nuts, but he likes to watch as well. Sick old voyeur.

The next occasion for perversion is a library book we've recently gotten for P - Ebb and Flo and the Sea Monster:

I genuinely have a hard time uttering the words without laughing. Do you think you could?

Again, not a great photo. Ebb, the dog, loves this ball. "Ebb sucked it, and tossed it." I didn't take photos of the rest of the book, but rest assured that Ebb did a lot of sucking and tossing. I don't think "tossing" means anything in the US vernacular, but it does here, hence my enjoyment. Seriously people, sucking and tossing. How could I let that go?

I feel I should say more, because I know if I plumbed the depths of her book collection I could come up with even more death and sex fodder. It's something to look forward to (dread?) for future posts!

*For those who missed my post mentioning my own Goodreads account due to Bloglines' inability to function as a proper feed reader, I'm on there and I want friends. My account is under my "real" email address, so send me an email at my gmail account (barrenalbion at gmail dot com) if you want to be a book BFF.

Music Monday: Run, run, run

2009-03-02T22:21:00.005Z

Oh, how times have changed. This is my third, count 'em THIRD Music Monday centred around workout music, this coming from a reformed lumpen, inactive complainer. Admittedly, when I did the first one it was all theoretical - I had the music, but not the actual working out.

Not that most of you care, but before I launch into my running playlist that I haven't already covered in previous posts, I'm going to tell you how my running is going. I had a two month break from early December thanks to my mental fragility and overall pervasive shitty feeling, and did not start running again until two and a half weeks ago. Since then, I have been a running machine. Well, for this casual runner anyway. Last Monday I ran my longest distance yet - 8 kilometres. For the non-metric heathens amongst you, that's 5 miles. If I can push myself for an additional 2 kilometres one night, I'll hit my goal of 10K.

Speaking of 10K, I have only gone and registered on an ACTUAL 10K RUN. Help. It takes place in July, which is keenly scheduled right before I leave for the States (aka Location of the Holy Grail Loubs). Now, because the British love charity runs, this one will be for Cancer Research UK. I'm nervous as all hell that I will collapse in a stupid heap of pale flesh and sweat, but I would love it if you could throw a few dollars/pounds in the direction of Cancer Research UK. I've got a widget over in yonder sidebar, so just follow the directions. Yes, non-UK residents can donate, and UK residents, please don't forget to add the whole gift aid thing.

I know it's a big ask in these troubled times and all, but I don't ever ask for anything more than professions of your undying love. Additionally, you have lots and lots of time to save up a few bucks since it doesn't happen until July. I'm going to keep mentioning this over the coming months because of its importance to me, so get used to me yapping in your ear about it.

Ok, you come here for the music, not the boring talk of running. Yawn, I know. As usual, no judgement!

Bootylicious: Destiny's Child

Survivor: Destiny's Child

Bulls on Parade: Rage Against the Machine

God's Gonna Cut You Down: Johnny Cash

Hot N' Cold: Katy Perry

Tambourine: Eve

Womanizer: Britney Spears

Drop It Like It's Hot: Snoop

Break Stuff: Limp Bizkit

Club Foot: Kasabian

I'm open to any new suggestions. My running playlist is quite stale and needs a bit more...action.

To Breed or Not to Breed

2009-02-25T20:46:00.000Z

Apologies for the pun. I know it's absolutely dreadful, but I really struggle with witty, pithy, non-cheesy titles, so this is the tripe I end up with.

We have now arrived at the stage in which we are wondering whether we want to try for a sibling for P, or if I should just sew it all up and be happy with one. The Dude first broached this topic soon after P's first birthday, at which point my mind was so addled by depression, anxiety, and general malice toward children, that I kicked him in the crotch and punched his neck. The Dude, who at 36 is six years older than my fine, youthful self, started feeling his biological clock ticking before P was even born. He is convinced that if we wait too much longer to have a second child, his legs will fall off as he plays football with them, and his false teeth will slip out of his mouth when reading bedtime stories. I try not to mock his concerns, but I confess that I find they rank far below mine.

My primary worry was that I would have as much trouble adapting to a second child as I did the first. It is only in the past year that my unabashed love for P has grown exponentially, and I am terrified that it would take me two years to get to that point again with a second child. It's a horrible thing to admit, but due to what I assume were my own issues with depression in conjunction with something I can only compare to PTSD (obviously on a much smaller scale, but it's the closest approximation I can think of), I think it's really within this period that I've realised what P means to me.

I know that I have loved her since birth. Even though the first few months were the worst in my life, I knew I loved her even though I had trouble expressing it. I never felt the outpourings of boundless maternal love that other new mothers seemed to have, which is something I still feel guilty about. When I read of new mothers of babies, and even toddlers, getting pregnant again, I was not the least bit envious. Instead, I thought of how positively dreadful that situation would be for me. I had enough trouble coping with my one child.

I should add that none of this was related to P's behaviour. Though...spirited, she is the most marvellous, intelligent, and unintentionally hilarious child I could ever hope for. For whatever reason, I'm only now able to realise what that means to me. I love her more than I ever thought possible - to the point that I'm scared by the volume of adoration I have for her. It is immensely refreshing and liberating for me to finally acknowledge that I know I would do whatever was asked of me if it meant she would be happy. I could have said all of that before to superficially satisfy my own doubts, but it's only recently that I would know in my heart that I mean it.

Now instead of wondering if I am capable of being a mother again, I question whether I could cope with investing so much love for a second time. It's not a matter of thinking that I couldn't possibly love another child as much as I love P, but rather that my love for her is so all-consuming, so overwhelmingly maternal, that I don't know if I have the substance to multiply that by two. As is customary of me, my acknowledgment of my vast love for P manifests itself in anxiety. Worrying constantly about the health and wellbeing of two children? I'll need to find a host of GPs to prescribe all the medications that I would inevitably require.

I do know that my uterus is a fickle little madam, as I am now highly envious of pregnant women and new mothers. I went from not possibly wanting another child to suddenly having an incomprehensible desire to procreate. I always wondered if I would "just know" if/when the time was right, and it appears as if that cliche does actually apply.

However, don't run out and buy those Johnny Cash onesies just yet though kids. I've still got to see this anti-depressant thing out a bit more in order to be less crazy for any potential future children. The Dude is annoyed by this delay now that I'm finally keen to give it a go, but strangely enough I favour my sanity over the possible earlier arrival of a sibling for P. I also suspect that pregnancy will not be bestowed upon me with any rapidity.

So yes, this anti-maternal sort is getting all precious about babies. What insanity.

Music Monday: Little of this, little of that

2009-02-23T22:11:00.003Z

No theme again today, just stuff I've been digging lately. I know, how fun for you!

I have decided that in two weeks' time, I shall have another Reader Request Music Monday, so as before, send all suggestions to barrenalbion at gmail dot com. I suspect I'll only get a handful, since Bloglines folks don't know I exist anymore, the poor mites. There is no need to pretend to be cool - after all, I'm a woman who has a Paris Hilton song on her iPod. Mark it in your diaries - all submissions need to be with me by Saturday, 7 March. Spread the good word.

The National: So Far Around the Bend

The Bird and the Bee: My Love (for as much as I HATE their song "Again and Again", I adore this one)

Oren Lavie: Her Morning Elegance (Really digging this song. If there is a better video this year, show me.)

Julie and Buddy Miller: Broken Things (Live)

Neil Young: Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (hey, I never said it had to be new stuff!)

Ray LaMontagne: Let It Be Me (oh, how I dearly love this song)

Beck: Farewell Ride

Fanfarlo: I'm a Pilot (described in a music blog as a mix of Beirut and Arcade Fire - score!)

I'm tired now, and must lay down. Don't forget - 7 March! Hook a girl up!

Say what now?

2009-02-18T22:40:00.002Z

Yesterday was the day on which I was officially knighted as an official member of the Crazy Person Realm - my repeat prescription was issued. Dr Action, the man who doesn't wait until you try to kill yourself to prescribe anti-depressants, sat me down to make sure this is what I wanted. I explained that I was getting on well with Citalopram/Celexa, other than the heavy painful periods that I have TWICE a month.

I've been telling myself that the wonky periods that just happened to start at exactly the same time I started Citalopram were due to the medication with the published side effects of painful and heavy periods. There was no mention of irregular cycles to include 30 periods a month or whatever, but with PCOS and my body being just generally odd in reaction to medications, it made sense to me.

Not so with Dr Action. No sooner did I mention the strange cycles and my PCOS, then he went deep into thought and said, "Chlamydia. Yes. Get tested for Chlamydia." Then he kind of smirked, whilst I tried to reign in my "bitch, you crazy" eyes. I go to an appointment expecting a 30 second handover of a prescription, and come out with my doctor thinking I have some kind of crotch rot.

I had grand plans of blogging about this and coming up with witty titles such as "Clap Your Hands" or "Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah (Chlamydia)!", but then Molly enlightened me to say that the clap is actually gonorrhea, not chlamydia. I should have known that the doyenne of the Southern STD Collective would split hairs. I kid of course, Molly only has crabs.

Now I must pee in a cup to prove that I am not all chlamydia'ed up, which is pointless. Dr Action wasn't even aware that Citalopram caused heavy and painful periods, and no doubt he wanted to roll his eyes at me as soon as I said, "Well, I googled the side effects..." but sometimes googling DOES help. I read about women like me, crazy of mind and irregular of cycle. Whatever. I'll do my part, if not just to prove a point.

Now, who wants to have sex with me?

Music Monday: Keystone State Sounds

2009-02-15T22:02:00.002Z

Thanks to my brother, I have an idea for this week's Music Monday - music from Pennsylvania musicians. It's not arbitrary, as I'm a native Pennsylvanian (not Transylvanian, as is the joke here in the UK when you say "Pennsylvania").

The first band is Dr. Dog, from Philly. I've included three songs because they have such a diverse sound that you can't even tell it's the same band!

Dr. Dog - Hang On

Dr. Dog - My Old Ways

Dr. Dog - The Ark

Website
MySpace

The second band is Perkasie, from Lancaster, PA. One of the band members goes to college with my brother, so this is a favour to him. He's been pestering me for months now to listen to them and put them on Music Monday, so here you go kid. Don't say I never gave you nothin'.

They are a local band, so forgive them for the lack of big budget videos, it's all live performances here, but it is good stuff. Check out their MySpace page (linked below) if you want to hear some more tracks.

Perkasie - Wastin' Time/Down by the Riverside:

Perkasie - (unsure of the title)

MySpace

Next up is Rachael Yamagata (Reading), who has featured on here before, but here she is again. Deal with it.

Rachael Yamagata - Worn Me Down

Rachael Yamagata - Be Be Your Love

Rachael Yamagata - I Wish You Love

Website
MySpace

The next one doesn't quite fit in with the indie and/or singer-songwriter stuff from above, but it wouldn't be my Music Monday without a bit of music that doesn't match the rest. So, with that said, here's Eve (Philadelphia).

Eve - Tambourine

Eve - Who's that Girl

Eve (feat. Gwen Stefani) - Blow Ya Mind

Website MySpace

The next band, Aderbat, is from Doylestown (near Philly). I know less than nothing about them, as they are another recommendation from my brother. Blame him if you think they are shit.

Aderbat - Pilgrim

Aderbat - Busted Cars (live)

Aderbat - We Belong to the Sea

MySpace
Website

Another band I've never heard of before my brother recommended them is Illinois, from Bucks County. Try typing "illinois" into YouTube, and see with you come up with. I alsmot threw in the towel, but thanks to idiocy and a dogged sense of persistency, I found some videos. Not bad, from what I've heard.

Illinois - The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe, Part 1

Illinois - The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe, Part 2

Illinois - The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe, Part 3

Website
MySpace

Self-Love Day 2009

2009-02-14T16:28:00.004Z

Heh. Not that kind of Self-Love Statia, you pervert. Not all of us spend our days in a masturbatory haze.

I think VDay is a crock, and so does The Dude. We "celebrated" a couple of weeks ago by purchasing a load of Lush products, fueling our newest shared vice. So rather than waxing not-so-poetically on my ginger, dodgy-hipped partner, I'm going to talk about myself briefly.

I saw this on Sizzle's blog, and thought I might as well since I'm so high on life at the moment (however synthetically). It's shamelessly self-serving, even for me, since the gist is to say what you like about yourself, thus encouraging any of your ten readers to say what they like about you. I hope to not be completely humiliated by a single digit amount of people searching their brains desperately for one nice thing to say, but conversely I understand if you don't want to indulge me. I'm such a giver. Yeah, say that.

I'm not overflowing with self-confidence, as you have probably noticed from my numerous navel-gazing, miserabilist posts over the past few years. However, despite my protestations I am actually rather fond about some of what makes Pru, Pru.

I believe myself to be intelligent. Not Alexa-intelligent, but more smarterer (JOKE)than a lot of the general population. I think I'm well-rounded and diverse in my interests. I tend to get along with a lot of different types of people because of that. I genuinely believe I'm a very good mother, and I'm confident that I will raise my daughter to be a strong, able woman. I may be a procrastinator and not get that birthday card out to you on time if at all, but I am generous to a fault. If I am given £1000 by a mysterious benefactor, I will buy myself a magazine and spend the rest on others without thinking. Much as I hate my body, I think I have pretty eyes. This means that no matter how dreadful the rest of me looks, I actually think to myself sometimes, "Uh, I've got my eyes at least." When all else fails, I do love a fair bit about myself.

So that's that. If you want to do it, here's what you need to do (lifted word for word from Sizzle with the exception of my addition of number 5. Sorry Sizzle):

1.) You’re gonna grab yourself a banner. If you don’t like the one I’ve used in this post, you can find another one here.

2.) You’re gonna post that banner and then tell us all something that you really like love about yourself (thus, the “self-love” portion of our program).

3.) Ask or beg your readers to post one thing that they too love about you!!! If your blog friends are nice, you shouldn’t have to beg…much.

4.) Enjoy yourself and spread the love by doing this on your blog! If you want to, drop me a line or a trackback so that I know you participated too!

5.) If you don't want to do this on your blog, but want to share why you love yourself, please feel free to do so in my comments section.

Let the orgiastic wonder and self-love commence!

On the road again

2009-02-11T21:04:00.003Z

Am I allowed to brag? I feel as if I almost never talk of my child's obvious brilliance, which, admittedly, may be called into question once I divulge that the other day her career choice was thus - "I want to be an iceberg when I grow up. Oh, or a policeman." Alrighty then. Regardless, I'm not talking about that now. I'll leave that for some other time when I'm void of ideas for blog posts.

This time, it's about me - a blogger's favourite topic. Me, me, and me. As you know, I started running last summer and lost something like a pound. I don't believe in scales, so I'm thinking perhaps I lost about a stone (14lbs), but it may have been less than that. My trousers were all very loose, and on occasion, far too close to falling down around my ankles for comfort.

A few months ago, I thought that I should really be losing more weight for the time and effort I had been investing. I ran 5K three times a week, and I was monk-like in my adherence to healthy eating habits. I seemed to stall, which I understand is common, but it significantly affected my desire to keep running.

This, added to the inescapable depression, lead to my runs becoming more and more infrequent. I'm not a natural runner, which is to say that I am not, nor will I ever be, one of those people who grasps running in a great bear hug full of passion and admiration. I'm an athletic person, but that doesn't translate to a love of running. I do it because I have to, and as exercising goes, it's manageable. I am not clawing at the door each evening begging to be let out so I can become one with the sound of my running shoes hitting the pavement.

In November I stopped running for a week, and barring a random run or two, took a three week spontaneous hiatus. I then ran once more in the beginning of December, then gave up again. My Mom came for Christmas, barely acknowledged my weight loss, and also made reference to me borrowing her (much larger) trousers one laundry day. Up to that point, I would occasionally convince myself that I'd lost a noticeable amount of weight, but my Mom's casual approach to that put me off running completely. I know it makes no sense, as you'd think it would inspire me to run more, but this is not how my tiny, irrational mind works.

So, before I know it, it's February and I've not run for two months. I'm a born procrastinator and conflict avoider, so my approach to situations like these is to keep putting things off in the hopes they'll somehow resolve themselves via divine intervention. How that was to happen with running, I'm not sure. Most nights I told The Dude that the following evening was The One. I was going to get back on the horse, come what may. Each night, tiredness and television won out.

However, I reached a point today when I realised that I do kind of miss it. I don't miss gasping for breath or hawking huge phlegm conglomerations into the grass as I am running, but I do miss the high. I forced myself out the door at 7pm, braving the cold and wind, determined to keep trying to lose weight so my Mom no longer assumes her bigger trousers will fit me. My goal was to simply get out and do some distance - a mile and a half, two...no pressure. Well, guess who got out there and ran 5K with one of my best times ever? I'm well aware that some of you fit folks out there will scoff at my alleged accomplishment, but it's the small steps for some of us.

I hope this is me getting back into running properly, because bitch gotta pair of Louboutins coming to her this summer if she can manage a 10K before her visit to the States. I can't have laziness and indifference come between me and Loubs. Who's with me?*

*Er, I don't mean I'm going to buy you a pair as well. Though my husband does tend to buy his co-workers Lush products (don't ask), I doubt he'd stretch to a pair of Loubs for my internet friends. I'm just talking support for other exercisers or exercisers-to-be, which is surely just as good as a pair of high falootin' shoes, if not better. Right? Right?

Reformation

2009-02-09T22:10:00.003Z

Alas and alack, no Music Monday today. Despite only resuming MM recently, I'm already searching for and not finding inspiration, so if you think of any themes, please do let me know (not that you will, but it's barrenalbion at gmail dot com).

Instead, I shall inspire and delight you with tales of my rediscovered love of the printed word. I've always been an avid reader, but college, full-time work, and now a toddler hell bent on world domination have seriously dented any chance of me being a truly prolific reader. I'm envious of those of you who have some or all of those things going on, yet can still manage to read a book per week (or more). I'm prone to appalling laziness, and will often choose America's Next Top Model or a property programme over any one of the numerous books on my shelves.

Pathetic as it sounds, part of my lack of reading is due to insufficient light. We live in a small flat, and our lounge has a lovely, but truly impractical light fixture. The jumbled mass of delicate silver wires with small, tubular shafts really ties the room together, but it's not so good on the whole light-casting front. Shame. I have plenty of light options in our bedroom, but I don't really like alienating myself from The Dude when we have so little time to spend together anyway.

With this said, I now do a lot of my reading at bedtime, with my bedside lamp serving as a de facto interrogation light beaming right in The Dude's face while he's trying to sleep. I am also prone to 45 minute baths, or extended periods on the toilet, just so I can get some blessed reading done.

Molly committed a huge error when she introduced me to Goodreads, which has deprived me of many productive working hours in the last week. I want to add all the books on my shelves! I want to see what others are reading! I want to read reviews for every book I've ever read! Show me quotes! Quiz me! I.just.can't.get.enough. I'm more addicted to this stuff than I was to jabbing myself in the gut with my Puregon pen, so, suffice it to say, I must be in love.

I find reading quite a lonely hobby - once you finish a book, there isn't necessarily anyone to discuss it with. I talk to The Dude about what I read, but he'd need to stop scratching his balls and watching UFC long enough to take any notice of me pontificating on literature. The guy has an MBA and lectures for a living, but he's not much of a reader, the poor, simple soul.

Goodreads has discussion threads that I can just observe, or take part in. It's so nice to be able to see what other people think, rather than mulling over everything in my head as I'm going to sleep at night. People there can spell and know that "a lot" is two words. There are of course the arrogant, absurdly verbose twats like that pretentious hipster in your 20th Century American Lit class in college, but once those gasbags are bypassed, it's all good.

I finished Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" last week, and though I have "Cat's Eye" waiting, I've chosen to read Gary Shteyngart's "Absurdistan" in an effort to rid myself of my all-Atwood-all-the-time ways. I'm regretting it so far, but then I think that's largely because I've dug myself into this Atwoodian ditch and I can't see non-Atwoodian sky. I have a habit of finding an author I like and then reading nothing else until I've completed their oeuvre, and so by forcing myself to read another author right now I'm trying to break that habit. Unfortunately I've chosen a work by a male author with a frankly disgusting male protagonist, so I didn't even bother to ease myself into this transition gently. Does anyone else find it hard to read books by authors of the other gender if their protagonists are also male with a very strong male perspective?

Anyway, this is also my long-winded way of telling you to befriend me on Goodreads. No, I'm not asking, I'm telling. Because Goodreads is a mix of my online/secret life and the real one, I don't have a username obvious to readers of this blog. If you are on Goodreads and want me to find you, please send me an email (again, barrenalbion at gmail dot com). I will then look you up, add you to my friends list, and then we will be BFFs. I'll tell you if your butt looks big in those pants, and we can go and get manicures and pedicures together. I think you know this is what's best for you.

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My feed does not seem to be right in Bloglines. Major Bedhead, bless her, has been trying to tell me how to fix it, but I think I might be abnormally stupid because I can't figure it out. It seems fine in Google Reader, so where is Bloglines going wrong? Help! I miss my Bloglines people, and I think they think I'm dead. Please help me disabuse them of this disturbing notion.

Music Monday: New Ear Candy

2009-02-02T20:35:00.002Z

No themes today, just random things that are making me chair dance at work lately. Well, it's mostly chair head bopping with the occasional out of tune singalong. I'm stuck in a corner, so I can quite happily go about my music-inspired oddness with scarcely a person noticing.

First we have Passion Pit: Cuddle Fuddle. This song didn't catch me at first, but now I'm enjoying it far more than I feel I should. It's a jumble of dischordant sounds - it makes me think of a room with six stereos playing different music and hundreds of pounds of cutlery falling from the ceiling. I'm not trying to be lame creatively, it's really what came to mind when trying to elucidate its sound. So basically, it's kind of a jumbled cacophony of madness, but that's why I like it!

MySpace

Heartless Bastards: The Mountain

My song of the moment. I'm not one for repetition, but I listen to this on loop every single day because I'm crazy like that. It's like musical Swedish Fish, I just can't get enough. Also, check out what sort of person this wonderful voice eminates from. A big voice from such a wee woman! If you only listen to one song in this Music Monday, make it this one.

MySpace Website

Hayes Carll: Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

I can only find live versions of this song, but I'm sure if you really wanted it bad enough you could find it somewhere. Actually, all you need to do is listen to public radio. This version is much slower than the radio/album version, and I'm not quite sure which I prefer.

Hayes Carll's MySpace
Website

Calexico: Victor Jara's Hands

Calexico won't be new to a lot of you, and I must say that I'm not usually much of a fan. However, this song has been getting a lot of play lately and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's a nice jaunty song that spices up an otherwise dull workday punctuated with idiots and incompetant managerial staff. Sorry, pointless but cathartic aside...

MySpace
Website

The Postmarks: Goodbye

The Postmarks are good for when you're in a silly, lighthearted poppy sound. Nothing too serious. I think listening to them makes me tick yet another box in the "How the Stuff White People Like website is totally about me" category. I am apparently painfully white and liberal. Poor me.

Jessica Lea Mayfield: For Today

I've emailed myself from work numerous times with this woman's name urgently typed for the purpose of Music Monday, but have only just gotten around to including her. Want to feel old? This kid was born in '89. '89 folks. Despite her obnoxious youth, listen. You'll thank me. Again.

MySpace

The BPA (Brighton Port Authority) feat Emmy the Great: Seattle

Again, indie hipster music, but what a lovely voice she has.

Website
MySpace

That's your lot for this week. I have to go finish watching 24.