change of heart

My female-ness is sort of in hyper drive right now. While I often 'joke' about being a 29 year old female with no prospects who is well on her way to becoming a cat lady, I've come to realise quite recently that I don't actually want to be alone. There is a huge part of me that wants to be noticed, that wants to be cared about and loved - although I am completely without the balls to initiate 'contact' with men-folk, which is sort of where the ideal falls apart.

Hence, I am looking around me as if driven by primal instincts, sniffing out anyone half decent - and I mean anyone. Ashamedly the new bloke who empties the bin at work looked almost dashing in the green reflective glow of the rubbish bin lid today - whistling and smiling in his khaki uniform - he seemed like the kind of simple my life requires. And don't get me started on the tradie contractor I've been devoting REM cycles to. Except maybe I will, because he looks a lot like this...

The small company he works for tends to be called in to do odd bits of work around the place, most recently he has been working on establishing the amenities of a new building right on my doorstep at work. So of course, there's been trench digging and flexing calves and glistening triceps. This guy is freakin' fit! And polite, and hard working, with dark brown skin and glorious grey-blue eyes, he had me at "good morning".. those couple of times he said it, like, months ago. Clearly my imagination doesn't need a lot of encouragement.

His presence has been infrequent of late, which made me sad...

So, this week when he returned to continue, and possibly complete the work, I was delighted. I was all....

As the days wore on, I continued to sneak glimpses of him through the wooden blinds and found countless legitimate excuses to journey outside to chance an encounter. But the days ticked over, and I was all...

And now he's gone, the trench has been filled and compacted and my work days feel a little emptier than they used to. 

But, if I'd known then what I know now - perhaps I would've seized the opportunity of the late night walk to the public library with my girlfriends and Justin-big lips, for a pash on the pine logs too. I'm told he slobbered a lot, but, meh - beggars can't be choosers right?

in my shoes

Today at work I was alone most of the day.  In one sense, this was peaceful, but it was also incredibly boring and frustrating.  I felt like I'd never see the end of the day.  At one point, I'm unpacking dozens of pairs of crutches - and as I'm squashing the giant cardboard boxes with my feet, it occurs to me that this time last year, in these very shoes, I was gallivanting around Romes sights and eating amazing gelati... it hardly seems fair. 

So, I excused myself fifteen minutes early, said I had an appointment, with my weekend, and left. I ended my day feeling that I had been the best kind of person I could be today.

This little skit kept getting played on the radio - and it made me laugh out loud every time. The distance between laughter should never be long, so we should get it wherever we can find it.

how to be a woman

If ever faced with a situation, in which I needed to refer to myself as a 'woman', I would always mentally stutter on the word - as if it were an untruth. Of course, physically I fit into that category just fine, but emotionally.. mentally - I've never really been sure.  I don't know if it's because I feel 'woman' is a descriptor saved for strong, self assured females; mothers or mature types that have grown into themselves? As for me, I don't feel strong or sure about anything - mostly I'm just trying to keep myself relatively sane and alive on a day to day basis.

So, when I heard about the book by Caitlin Moran, entitled "How to be a Woman" - the category of which it belongs is 'Humour/Feminism' I was intrigued.

where it's at

'Feminism' is another one of those uncomfortable terms for me.  I suppose that's because in my head I thought that feminists are the kind of folk to burn their bras in giant bonfires, yell at men, be generally dissatisfied and kind of argumentative. The sort of women who might cause me to blush with a controversial comment, and challenge me to think - have my own opinions and be bold with them. However, this is all beside the point, because this book is not really like that at all!

In her book, Moran isn't trying to turn us into bitter and twisted man haters - instead it is a humorous look at things from her point of view - littered with truths, life experiences, and the stuff of things to make you think - to make me think.

At its beginning, Moran talks about the logistics of being a woman - she states "..in many ways, there is no crueler or more inappropriate present to give a child than oestrogen and a big pair of tits". Well, she's preaching to the choir here with that one - it was the long hot summer of 1994 that saw me eternally condemned to sports-days in my baggy school jumper. God, that was shitty, and inevitably futile - just as Moran observes "the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose.  At some point - scarred, and exhausted - you either accept that you must become a woman - that you are a woman - or you die.." (of heat exhaustion perhaps?)

It interests me when she likens the fight of feminism to an analogy of broken windows.  "In the 'Broken Windows' theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored, and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows.  Eventually, they may break into the building, and light fires, or become squatters." In her mind, perhaps if we don't sweat the small feminist stuff - which in this case, are the broken windows, then women won't have a chance with the big stuff because our whole house is going to be burnt down by squatters! (I promise she explains it far better than I do!)

Later, Moran addresses the question on all our lips: am I a feminist? To which she provides a brief but effective assessment: "Put your hands in your pants. a) Do you have a vagina? and b) Do you want to be in charge of it? If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist." Simple really. Yes, and hell yes - for the record. She convinces me further with: "what do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue', by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES?" And then, to cement it all, she later affirms "...it's not as if strident feminists want to take over from men. We're not arguing for the whole world. Just our share."

Other note able quotes that had me giggling in delight, or thinking... or both:

"When did feminism become confused with Buddhism? Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone?...I don't build in a 20 per cent 'Genital Similarity Regard-Bonus' if I meet someone else wearing a bra.  If someones an arsehole, someones an arsehole - regardless of whether we're both standing in the longer toilet queue..."

"What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.  Are you a feminist?  Hahaha. Of course you are."

"Because at the moment, I can't help but notice that in a society obsessed with fat - so eager in the appellation, so vocal in its disapproval - the only people who aren't talking about it are the only people whose business it really is."

"Based on my own personal experiences, 100,000 years of male superiority has its origins in the simple basis that men don't get cystitis."

"When we discuss the great tragedies that can possible befall a woman, once we have discounted war and injury, it is the idea of being unloved, and therefore unwanted that we wince over the most. Elizabeth I may have laid the groundworks of the British Empire, but she could never marry - poor, pale, mercury-caked queen." Now this, I relate to, because I am one of those silly women who thinks this way.

On shoes: "Women wear heels because they think they make their legs look thinner..they think that by effectively walking on tip-toes, they're slimming their legs down from  size 14 to a size 10.  But they aren't, of course. There is a precedent for a big fat leg dwindling away to a point - and it's on a pig."

"If I'm going to spend £500 on a pair of designer shoes, it's going to be a pair that I can a) dance to 'Bad Romance' in, and b) will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase."

On kids: "To be frank, childbirth gives a woman a gigantic set of balls. The high you get as you realise it's all over, and that you didn't actually die, can last the rest of your life. Off their faces with euphoria...new mothers finally tell the in-laws to back off, dye their hair red, get driving lessons, go self-employed, learn to use a drill, experiment with Thai condiments, make cheerful jokes about incontinence, and stop being scared of the dark."

"Every parent has their particular moment where they realised that, since they'd had a child, nothing really fazed them anymore. For me, it was the day that potty-training Lizzie went wrong, and I had to kick a poo, across a falconry display, in a marquee, at Regent's Park Zoo."

"Feminism needs zero tolerance over baby angst. In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, any more. It has to be about who we are, and what we're going to do." Well said Caitlin Moran!

On the ugly machine that is gossip magazines: "I've read more about Oprah Winfrey's arse than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren't spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey's arse."

On how to know: "...in the same way you can tell if some sexism is happening to you by asking the question 'Is this polite, or not?', you can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, 'And are the men doing this, as well?'"

On ageing and plastic surgery: "I want a face full of frown lines and weariness and cream-coloured teeth that, frankly, tells stupid and venal people to FUCK OFF... Lines and greyness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone - the equivalent of the yellow and black banding on a wasp..." I really like her theory.

On the reality of not being a princess: "Accepting you're just some perfectly ordinary woman who is going to have to crack on, work hard and be polite in order to get anything done is - once you've got over the crippling disappointment of your thundering ordinariness - incredibly liberating."

"Simply being honest about who we really are is half the battle...there's so much stuff -in every respect - that we can't afford and yet we sighingly resign ourselves to, in order to join in, and feel 'normal'. But, of course, if everyone is, somehow, too anxious to say what their real situation is, then there is a new, communal, median experience which is being kept secret by everyone being too embarrassed to say, 'Don't think I'm a freak, but..."

Upon finishing this clever read - I'm not entirely sure that I'm ready to accept I will never be a princess; I'm not even sure what kind of woman I'm trying to be, but like Caitlin Moran: "what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human. One of 'The Guys'. But with really amazing hair." Yep, that about covers it.

SB

tiny triumphs

Beautiful creation by Rachel Howard, 'Black Dog'

I have now replaced ugly emotion with Easter egg chocolate and internet shopping. So I will get fatter, and also be poor.  Plus, there's a cat that keeps hanging around the house - so I could just start my cat collection now. 

I'm only being semi-serious when I say these things... On the plus side, my sense of inappropriate humor is still intact.

SB

I'm not miserable, I'm just not like them

There are a few talents that I declare must play me, in the event that my existence makes it to a tele-movie. 

Janeane Garofalo - 'cause she's just kick-ass awesome.

Daria - you know, it could be animated?

Catherine Tate - in case it's a BBC production.

 

SB

ditto

What Freddie says.... perhaps minus the creepy unitard-wearing mob.  But that body roll towards the end - that shit's on a whole other level!



SB xx

there will be no swaddling

This is the 'love to swaddle up original'.  And there is absolutely no way I'd be putting my baby, metaphorical or otherwise in this thing. Jesus. The shit you find when online shopping.

SB xx

The little girl in me

I am a self professed potty mouth - I can drop a 'shit' 'crap' and even 'fuck' just about anywhere. I 'balls' with the best of them and call 'bullshit' when I see it.

Which is why it's hilarious that when, say, I try to open a door the wrong way, or drop a pen, the automatic thing that comes out of my mouth is "whoopsie daisy". These words escape my mouth before I even have time to register them. I caught myself doing it today, and I just thought it was the most ridiculous thing. Here I am, this awkward, 28 year old, broad shouldered with a weathered heart - behaving like an eight year old blonde girl in a summer dress, frilled socks and shiny white shoes.

Well Fiddle-dee-dee! Ain't that just swell?

SB xx

hook, line and sink-her

I'm so emotionally lame, it's disgusting. I hang on every word that boy bestows. Why? Is he magical, evil, possessed, criminally cruel? He has so many female friends, and they all adore him - how does he get to be that way, and why are there so many girls who feel that way about a seemingly ordinary boy? Does he play us all? Does he know what he creates?  I am undecided.

I know that when I sat down to attend to my work emails - seeing one from him - excited me like nothing else. Double clicked in a flash, no looking back - I wasted 45 minutes pondering and replying.. and all day I hung for a reply, to my reply. He remembered my birthday. Over the weekend, I felt sick at the thought that I didn't matter enough for him to wish me happy birthday on facebook. I am such a joke.  Amongst a short email on my birthday-day, he followed up with some funny birthday pictures today; one being:

Does it matter where you find a laugh, or the skip of a heart beat - just as long as it feels real? I suspect the only thing at risk of harm, is me. Uh oh.

SB xx

Things I learnt while sober in a pub

Lookout kids, it must be a blue moon tonight 'cause this little bird is escaping the coop for a little night out with the 'normal' people.

Before embarking, I looked upon it as a chance to prove to work folk that I am indeed normal-ish. I may or may not have helped this cause tonight.

Being the only sober person in a room full of intoxicated people is kind of a lonely place to find yourself. With nothing to blame my bad dance moves or poor behaviour on - it's a tougher spot to be in than one might think. There are of course positives to it... for instance, I will remember all the interesting things that dribbled from loose-lipped coworkers, and I can make logical, practical decisions; I can drive home - thus avoiding creepy taxi encounters and I will be able to fully enjoy the complete offerings of my Sunday.

Tonight was fun - I had a laugh, and listened to live music sung by a handsome man. I loosened up, had a dance and was the recipient of more occasions of bodily contact than my sober mind can recall. There was also a sadness about tonight... and if this, here, is the equivalent of (non-drunk) drunk-blogging then my secret to be revealed is that all I wanted the whole night was John. I found myself lingering in thoughts of what it might've been like had he been there. I miss him in many ways - especially on nights like this, where anything could have been possible. I find myself angry with him - because he was supposed to be here; he was supposed to be glancing at me across the crowded room as I giggled at the jokes of my drunken friend; he was supposed to innocently touch my back as we danced and sang along to karaoke; it was supposed to be you John, to offer to walk me to my car...not FreakyFriday coworker who always looks at me intently and makes lame jokes for my benefit. I was supposed to sing 'Mustang Sally' and fist pump to 'Livin' on a Prayer' with you and be around you; be with you. I don't want to meet some random in a bar... I just want you and I can't have you because you are 1000km's away and you do not want me. You couldn't even say goodbye. I hate you for that.

SB xx

High Five!

Ok, so picture this. A scrawny Asian guy is hooning around a car park, in his oh-so-cool Camry; finds a spot and reverses into it like a bad ass; and as I walk past the now stationery beast I hear nothing other than the following song, rattling the windows of the car...


Now, that shit was worth waking up for.

SB xx