Yoo Hoooo!

Thought you'd got rid of me that easily, eh? Well, tough titties, I'm still here! I've just been busy doing...lazy.

As you can see, I've changed my URL and blog title to "Rebecca Writes & Runs" to forewarn people of a topic they can expect me to blather incessantly on about in many posts to come now that I've discovered the joys of getting off my squashy bottom. 

See, I've exhausted my supply of people who will listen to me about my recreational lolloping around the block without their eyes leaking their suppressed urges to hit me over the head with frying pans and other blunt objects... so I turn my attentions to you, my friend! Please feel free to imagine that I am standing a mere eyelash's length away from your face as I speak to you. 

Mmm.  So uncomfortably close.

....do you want a neck rub? ;)


No? Okay, then.  I'll just tell you what's changed in my two whole moons of absence from Blogspot:

 1.  I've fallen (almost literally-I'm not the most coordinated wannabe athlete) head over heels (translate: arse over tit) in love with running.  Running really slowly, but still running.  I'm still overtaken by mobility scooters and people over the age of 90, but my head's in a different place.  I've gone full on geeky about it.   

2.  I've completed a half marathon.  I had to walk for some of it, but I lived to tell the tale to anyone willing and unwilling to listen. LOOK AT MY MEDAL!!  Look at iiiit....

 

 

3.  I've celebrated the fact that Krispy Kreme donuts are now finally available in Swansea by eating ALL OF THE DONUTS IN SWANSEA. 

4.  I also found out that every diabetic's favourite cereal Lucky Charms are also purchasable from a local supermarket after I thought they'd been outlawed in Britain for being too delicious.



...as you can see, all of these massive life events are either running or snack based.  Not a lot has changed, really.

...Oh, and I got my first ever race t-shirt too!  Wanna see my race t-shirt??

....ohhhh yeeeeah....

...I promise that my next post will be a little more structured and feature less of my boobless torso.

Loveyoubye! xx

Things I Am Faster Than

Hey!  This post is mainly for my own benefit, just to put that out there.  But if any of it makes you feel better, then that's just dandy...

I may have mentioned that I'm running a half marathon - my first - in October (cue gasps of surprise), and it's been a cool but slightly weird few months because I've been able to legitimately say that those limpy, t-rex armed gallops I do three to five times a week is actual training for something.

Of course, some days I hate it and some days it makes me feel like an actual superhero with powers and a cape and shit (especially if I have my jacket tied around my waist - fanny caaape!).  But there is still a worm of doubt that occasionally slips its way into my head and tells me that despite the fact that I can now run nearly twelve miles without dropping dead, I'm still too slow and always will be too slow to call myself a "real runner".  That everything and everyone is faster than me.

But that's not true now, is it?  And this is why I am making myself compile a list of ten things I am faster than.  To comfort me and to squish the bad-vibes worm that's keeping itself warm in my grey matter.  Enjoy and take heed that you are probably faster than most, if not all of these things too while you are running/walking/dragging yourself along the concrete by your fingernails:


1.  James May off of Top Gear.

2.  Anyone sat down chewing on their cud in front of the TV while you're doing whatever it is you do.

3.  Evolution.

4. Future you - the one with the bus pass and a purse full of Murray Mints.

Mmmm... Murray Mints.

5.  Alternative reality future you where you stopped participating in physical activity and decided to get obese and wheezy off of  a regime of sitting around under piles of burgers and pizza.  She probably has crippling arthritis, bad skin and a weird smell that even her rucksack full of Murray Mints can't mask while she's taking up two seats and part of the aisle on the bus.

Mmmm...Murray Mints.

6. Kids that haven't learned to walk yet.  Those losers.

7.  Zombies.  But only the old, shuffly kind - before all the remakes with all the sprinting.  Hollywood's out to make me feel bad nowadays. Obviously.

8.  The thought processes of those people who creep around supermarkets, slack-jawed and obliviously sliding directly in front of people's faces as they browse, leaving their victims with nostrils full of stranger hair and the kind of pent up aggression that has them grieving for hours over the fact that they didn't just straight up nut them in the fucking skull.

9.  Snails.

10.  A wall.



 There.  Don't we all feel better now?

Nah, me neither.   Still.  I'll be "running" the Cardiff Half Marathon, and if you're going along and also feel intimidated by the professionalism and athleticism of the other attendees, please feel free to seek me out.  I will probably have mints and you are guaranteed to beat at least one person on the day!

http://www.cardiffhalfmarathon.co.uk/

 

p.s This is a good article from Women's Running on the topic of finishing last and why it matters naff all.  Much better than all the stuff I just made you read to get to this bit.  Sorry. Here you go:

http://womensrunning.competitor.com/2013/08/inspiration/what-happens-if-you-finish-a-race-in-last-place_14662

The Seven Signs Of Stress

This week has been nothing short of hellish.  And it's only Monday.

Part of my role in my sometimes-mentioned office job is sales-based, and I've been doing lots more of that side of things while a few of the other sales-trained bods are off on holidays being all fabulous and tanned (bastards! I hate you and your stupid bikinis!  I hope you get weird tan lines!).  

I'm convinced that all of our customers have waited until we have the fewest number of staff in as possible to pounce, hungrily demanding our wares and services.  This suddenly enthused mob of customers  wanting to throw money down our phone lines is great for business, but not so great for the individuals such as myself who find themselves having to up their multi tasking level a few hundred notches higher than they're used to.  I feel I have all the arms of an Indian Goddess but not enough functioning brain cells to keep them all in check. 

I'm sure I'll get used to it, and being busy doesn't half make the day fly and get the heart rate up,  but this level of busy has been going on for about a fortnight now, and I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of acceptance and adaptation...or full-blown mass-murderer mode.  I am this close to pummeling my telephone into smithereens with my bare fists and snapping the receiver's cord with my teeth.

As you can see, it takes a while for my stress levels to normalize.  But it's been sort of fun in a ha-ha-ha-I'm-going-to-run-naked-into-the-street-with-my-pants-on-my-head-and-set-myself-on-fire kind of way to take note of the indicators I experience when I'm either starting to get stressed or when 'm already full-on, wide-eyed, tooth-baring, hair-pulling burnt out.


1.  Denial - If I know it's going to be a busy day, I will always start optimistically.  Start as I hope to go on.  I'll take things one thing at a time.  I can't do two things at once, so I'll get each thing out of the way to the best of my abilities and holy fucking shit is that the time already?? Shit shit shit!! Why is there paper in my hair?? Whose phone number is this on my hand, and why is my biro in my mouth, nib-side up?!  Did I remember to get dressed this morning?!

2.  Bladder Freakouts - I don't know if this is a fight or flight thing, but the more pressure I'm under, the more often I have to pee.  The it-hurts-when-I-breath type of needing to pee.  Which only make the stress worse, because on top of my list of impossibly numerous tasks, I have to make time to do frequent mad dashes to the loo.  I like to think it's my body's way of telling me to sit the fuck down and chill out for a second.  There's only so much you can do with your pants around your ankles.

3.  Aggressive Kindness -  This is where all my attempts to be a rational, helpful salesperson takes a nosedive, and, being a Brit brought up on the importance of politeness, instead of being rude, I just get scarily and loudly helpful when I pick up the receiver. "HelloRebeccaspeakingHOWCANIHELPYOU?!!! WHAT? YOU WANT TO BUY SOMETHING?! YES, I CAN HELP, HAHAHAHA WE'RE BEST FRIENDS NOW!! DON'T HANG UP ON ME, I NEED YOU!!!! ...hello?  Mrs Johnson, are you still there?"

4.  Aggressive Clumsiness -  As my mind is flashing all kinds of funky disco colours in my skull trying to make note of the fact that I need to be doing this that and the other as fast as yesterday, physical co-ordination is the first thing to go.  It's not unusual for me to leave work with a myriad of mysterious cuts, beverage stains and the odd bruise from picking up the phone with such force that I hit myself in the face with it.

5.  Feral Breaktimes - I get a half hour break for food.  I love strapping in to food bag at the best of times, but on a manic day, you realize just how short time is and eat with a terrifying frenzy, throwing food somewhere near your mouth in the hope that some of it will go in, reducing interaction with colleagues to the occasional glare to make sure they're not planning on stealing the processed meat that's sliding down your chomping chin.

6.  Blind Agreement -  
"Becky, did you do the-"
"YES! I am doing it!!"
"Have you-"
"YES, I have!"
"Do you-"
"YES!! Four of them now, with milk!"
"Actually, I was going to ask you if-"
"GET ME COFFEE OR DIE!!"

7.  Post Work Cleaning -  Stress makes me angry.  Mess makes me angry.  I am a messy person with a low stress threshold.  Seems only normal that when A comes home after I've had a difficult one, he finds me in one of his t-shirts on the bathroom floor, scrubbing manically with no trousers on and talking in tongues to myself.  Standard.

Two For Joy

Hey, hey guys, look! I got a tattoo! On my ass! 

By ass I mean arm.

It's my third one, and the selection process for it was just as rigorous and soul searching as it was with its predecessors.

... I saw a pretty picture, gave a lady with a needle some money and said "this on my body forever now, please!"

I've had it for three days and am gritting my teeth against the urge to pick the scabs (ooh, I love a good scab!!), and I must say, I think it looks rather marvellous.

Sounds sappy, but having something I consider pretty on my person at all times is making me feel slightly more attractive too.  Like I've avoided a few more blows off the ugly stick than I'd initially thought.  

Combined with a few people pointing out that since I've upped the mileage of my runs (ran 12 miles on Tuesday. 12!!!), I'm a bit less offensive on the eye of late (not a direct quote, obviously. My friends aren't as mean to me as I am...), I feel pretty good about myself this week.

Swag.

Etc.

Thanks to the running, I feel mentally stronger too. Capable at work, better around people. I've even eased up on my internal criticism about my little writing projects. A bit.

Running is magical!

Or maybe my tattoo is.  Two for joy and all that.

Or maybe ink poisoning affects the brain first... 

If you're interested, the people who professionally, cheerily and hygeinically scarred me for life are Swansea Tattoo Co, can be found on Facebook and are chuffing brilliant!  I was tattooed by Ami Williams =)

Helloooo, Sunshine!!

Considering the fact that I just walked into work 2 and a half hours early by accident, I feel pretty bloody marvellous! I immediately walked out in search of coffee as soon as my error was realised, and now here I am blogging from my phone in the window of a Sainsbury's cafe.  

I've bought a book (Zadie Smith's N-W), and I have another hour or so of time to myself that I wouldn't otherwise have had  if I'd done the usual late-shift thing of sleeping in or jogging.  Fuckin' a! I love love LOVE accidental time gainage!

I doubt I'd be feeling this good if it were pissing down with rain, leaving me glaring hatefully at the public out the window.  The sun is pleasantly grilling me, turning me into a happy, mindless summer sloth in a dress. Sunshine makes everything better.  I feel a list coming on!

1. Doing nothing is WAY more fun:  sitting here, gazing out at Swansea Marina's boats (though my favourite local boat, the brilliantly named "Itchy Pussy" is unfortunately absent) is a choice I've happily made.  Whereas if it was chucking it down, I'd be sullenly parked on my arse, hating the rain for keeping me indoors.

2. The running is better - because 1. You're not getting wet, 2. Your face isn't numb and 3. You don't feel breathless because your mouth isn't full if cold, nasty, whippy air.  Some people hate running when the sun's got his hat on, but I love it. No need to warm up because you're already sweating from every orifice, there's less pressure to go faster, and you truly appreciate what sweat is for. Not cool enough? Then sweat some more! Laaahvlee.

3. Everyone is happy - more or less. Glorious weather in Wales is something of a rarity, so its inhabitants crazily try to squeeze as many smiles and "how do's" out as possible before the sky turns back into a soggy, black blanket.  A lady just made my whole day by going out of her way to congratulate me on my nice dress. Thanks, lady, you wonderful human!! You look lovely too!

4. For a short space of time, EVERYTHING must be outside: roofs of cars must be down, massive shades must be on out faces, and we must copy the European way of sitting outside eating fabulous food at fabulous little cafes where they have dragged all of their tables out to the front of the building. One of the best things about being British is the reckless abandon with which we throw ourselves into being as intensely "summery" as possible, and that means spending so much time outdoors that you start to go feral.

5. Nekkid skin everywhere! I frequently yo-yo between intense self consciousness and not giving a single fuck about my appearance , and so I appreciate the awesomeness of when it's so hot that you don't care what you're wearing, so long as you don't melt into a human soup in your trousers. Cue a variety of burnt and sickly-pasty (I belong to the latter camp) flesh being flaunted in all shapes and sizes. It's nice to see, for a few days a year where the rake thin to the robust and rotund can let it all hang out so that we can all joyfully ogle each other's goodies without feeling too much like sex pests. More of this more of the time please, Brits!

Have a happy, sunny, chilled out, semi-naked day, everybody! I know I will! *rips off dress and runs into the car park*

This Month, I Are Mostly Being...Sober.

Hey hi hello....good day!

I have an hour to myself before work this morning - working slightly later, got up slightly earlier than usual.  Plenty of stuff I can get out of the way before my day even begins.  This hour-long vista of opportunity for productivity can only mean one thing:

Procrastinating on the internet!

I just wish I hadn't checked my bank account first.  Grim.  Looks like it's going to be a fairly quiet (translate: sober) month for this one, if I want to be able to get suitably pie eyed in front of this motley crew next month:

http://www.readingfestival.com/line-up

Oddly enough, though, I'm quite looking forward to a month of relative sobriety and peace.  I do love a night out, but they seem to be losing their sheen for me.  I don't know whether it's an age thing, or something to do with the fact that I only have to smell sambuca to transform into the emotional equivalent of a crayon left on a hot hob.

Most weekends, I go through this phase where every bone in my body is jumping around under my skin to get me out "dancing" (more translations: running around with fixed grin, arms rigid in the air) and I'm compelled to send out a barrage of oh-so-subtle "I'm soooo BORED tonight!" texts, in the hope that the people in my contacts list are equally soooo BORED and want to do something like, oh, I don't know.  Maybe just nip to the pub and, y'know, see what happens?

It's pretty much a guarantee that by the end of the night, I will have regretted listening to my jumpy bones, feeling disappointed because my expectations of the wild night of fun times weren't met.  I don't know what I expect....unicorns and American girly TV-esque lollitude where I am very drunk but still oh-so fabulous?  Dream on, sister! *finger snap*

Because I'm feeling old and embittered, here are 5 things about nights out on the tiles that never fail to disappoint:

1. That bit at the end of the night where no one is actually communicating with each other (myself included).  The whole club are just glassy-eyed pissed and looking through each other.  The best kind of conversation you can hope for at 3am is someone talking at you about their insatiable need for a kebab/that "fittie" they can't stop staring at yet wouldn't have looked twice at in the cold light of day.  
2. The sleepiness: I never ever used to experience this, but a wall has sprung up between me and a good time, and I tend to smash my face into it somewhere between 1 and 2 a.m.  Closing time was always too early for me, and I would be chomping at the bit to carry the party on elsewhere, anywhere, as long as I didn't have to go to bed while I was a student.  Nowadays, the witching hour passes, and, laden with knackered-ness and cider, I find myself too proud to admit that I"m feeling a bit snoozy and want to go home.  Instead, I have "dancing breaks" at the bar and end up getting so messy that when it is time to go, I have to actually instruct my legs to work as a team to get out of the door and into a taxi.
3. The pulling: I don't want to sound like a prude or a party pooper.  I have spent my fair share of nights as a teen latched onto some random's face in aid of a good time/a novel way to keep myself upright. We all have.  But when you're looking at it from the outside of said pull, there is nothing wild or exciting about it.  It's just a sweaty, wriggly mass of "well, I certainly hope I don't remember you in the morning, sweet cheeks!"
4. The dancing:  I love a goofy dance-off as much as the next white girl dancing shamelessly to hip hop, but there comes a point in the night where everyone has stopped with the silliness and they have begin to really mean it!  Hips are sashayed, people are doing that weird feel-yourself-up dance that you only ever see in nightclubs... Even while I'm pissed, I'm still inherently British.  This part of the night is where the "dance breaks" start to happen, and when I am "dancing", my exuberance will have melted down to a wobbly foot-shuffle as I pray for bed.
5. The emotions: Oh, God, the emotions!  If I have any insecurities, doubts, feelings previously bravely held in by a stiff upper lip, they will come spilling out of my mouth, because when I'm in da club, it's obviously a perfect time to tearfully inform everyone how fat and unloved I am.  Because that's appropriate, and everyone loves to talk a jibbering wreck down at the ass crack of dawn.  Such fun!  Most people have their own version of these mini meltdowns when they're on the sauce, but more often than not, they have to good sense to pipe down about it the next day and claim to remember nothing the following morning in hopes that any witnesses will follow suit. I, unfortunately, am a dweller.  The shame can follow me around for days.

Well, that was a happy-go-lucky post!  In other news, I am running my first parkrun with the lil sis next Saturday in preparation for the Race for Life event the following week, so pretty excited for that!  If you've not heard of a parkrun before, they are weekly 5k races dotted all over the country for people of all abilities, and they're 100% free!  Take a look:

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/

Happy Friday, all! 

xxx

Cheers To The Freakin' Weekend...

Today's lead me to believe that I should do the diva thing and beg my boss for 3 day weekends.  It took me well over half a day today to get over the stress of having a whole 24hrs to myself. 

This morning, I "accidentally" bought some new-old-faithfuls (high-ish heels).  For nights out, I usually select one pair of black heels to wear until their lop-sided, beer stained deaths.  My last pair were mortally wounded when a man took it upon himself to fall on and temporarily cripple me by landing smack bang on my knee cap.

Thanks, guy!

Then, I embarked on a 10 mile run.

I made it to 2 miles.  Just about.  My legs felt like they were seizing up - I'm not sure why - and the muggy heat just made me inexplicably angry.  I looked like a pasty hulk, tantrumming my way back up the beach to the car.  I fretted over what to do with my afternoon since it was suddenly going to be devoid of any physical activity.  Socialise?  Write?  Do work?  Drink (under the umbarella of "socialising" - I wasn't  quite stressed enough to be necking wine on my kitchen floor at that point).  That's what Brits do whenever the sun makes a fleeting appearance, isn't it?  Get plastered in a lovely, lovely beer garden.

Mmm...beer garden.

Overwhelmed with all the possible activities that lay before me, and my brain seeping anxiously out of my ears, I got home and made a sandwich.  Then I promptly took an aggressive nap in front of Peep Show.

And aggressive nap, in case you ask, is like a normal nap, except it's very sudden and you have no choice about whether or not you are going to do it.

...And here I am!  I'm feeling effing marvellous now!  Blogging and rocking some serious bed hed hair and heels (what?  Like I'm going to wait for an occasion to wear the new things? Pshuh!) .  It's taken all sodding day, but it's now occurred to me that one of the very best, tried and tested by people less...affected...than me - ways to spend a Saturday is this:

Doing Sweet Fuck All!

Happy Saturday, Internet!!

Running - You're Doing It Wrong!

You guys!  The weirdest thing happened to me today.  Like, this evening today.  That recently.  It shocked me to my very core.  I'm not even sure if I'm ready to share it with you because it's just so monumental in its...massiveness.

Okay, I am.  But that's only because I'm a pathalogical blogger who needs to share every waking thought with the Hive Mind....The media use that term to scare us internet dwellers, but I quite like it.  Makes me feel like a bee.  Bzzz.  Anyway, bees aside, here it is.  Deep breaths.

I did a run, and I liked it.

I know!  I know!  And if you didn't read that to the tune of a popular Katy Perry ditty, then you are either older than me, cooler than me or both.  Congratulations, you.  For three years or so, I've been doing this love/hate (translate: obsess about/weep about/binge eat and start the whole sorry process again) thing with running.  I have more or less "run" at least a couple of days a week since I started, but bar from the occasional inexplicably enjoyable jog, I have HATED every single teeny tiny second of the actual exercise.  It's a hot, boring, sweaty and stressful thing to do.  Especially when you know you could be at home stuffing cake into your fat face. 

Don't get me wrong.  The things that kept me going out on my little (for distance aint my thang, and neither is speed) jaunts all these years were:

- Guilt.  After building up enough "runs" to be able to tell people I'm not a couch potato all of the time, I felt as though it's not something I could ever ever give up now because I wouldn't even have that miniscule bragging right any more.

- The runners' high.  It's real.  And it's gooooood. 

- Being able to totally justify smothering everything that goes into my mouth with cheese and/or icing.  Because a two mile stop-start thing makes it okay, right?  ....Right?

So you see, the main reasons that I begrudgingly slap on my trainers on occasion are a combination of bitter guilt and wanting what comes after said trainer slappage.  Nothing to do with the run itself, which could only ever be horrible, horrible, horrible.

Until yesterday.  When I learned to my... I don't think my surprise...so to my slight pause in between battenburg bites, that for three years, I've been running all wrong. 

I bought a book - Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley (so good!!!) to devour on my Kindle app on my post-accidental-night-out kind of a Sunday.  I read it in a few short hours.  It was ruddy marvellous.  A lady writer's true recollections of learning to run and eventually developing quite a knack for completing marathons.  Right up my street.  It wasn't until the end of the book - in the bit that gives rather bloody good tips for both beginners and experienced runners - that I had it pointed out to me in black and white where I'd gone a bit boobs-up on the running front:

1. I was tiptoeing my routes - sounds weird, but it just means that instead of hitting the road with the middle-ish bit of my foot so I'm getting the most out of a simple stride, I've been alternating between doing these overstretched tinkerbell-types steps (Tink toes!!) and doing these big, clumpy, clumsy heel-to-the floor things, where I overcompensated and ultimately ended up hurting my muscles more than necessary (especially that weird one that keeps bothering my between my leg and my bum).

2. I was running towards something - Heminsley's best bit of visualization advice was to imagine a kindly person gently guiding you forward, pushing you along the route and holding you up, instead of imagining yourself running towards or after something.  This made the world of difference to me today.  It banished the "awh, fuck, am I still that far away?!!" feeling I often get.  Magic trick! I imagined that the kindly person was my grandad, who took me out on my first runs while I was still living at my mum's.... He's the ex military, no-bullshit, work hard and eat even harder kind of grandad.  So my imagination gave me a figure that was sort-of kindly but mostly just wouldn't take any of my lazy-ass crap any more.

3.  I was too bouncy - I thought that good running = enthusiasm, and so I tried to gee myself up by taking bouncy, bouncy tigger-steps wherever I went.  Small wonder I had to stop so often - I was using twice as much energy in pogoing up and down at the same time as running, instead of skimming the floor and landing comfortably on the middle of my foot.  It made every few feet feel like a mile.

Result?  I ran my usual 2.5 miles, which isn't far.  But I did it without stopping even once to "check my phone" or "do my shoelaces" or "look at the interesting thing that no one else can see but is suddenly very important and mystifying to me", which is a massive achievement for me.  I always, always have to walk a little while to find my breath again.  The whole thing felt like less effort, and I was faster! Faster with less effort! Considerably too!  Just... My mind is blown! So pleased.

I hope these tips get read by some other people who also think/thought they would be crap for ever and ever at running.  Three stupidly simple things I had no idea I was doing, and now I realise I'm better at something than I thought I was.  I'm hardly a hardcore athlete, but I'm far from terrible.  Now that I'm doing it properly, I can just concentrate on enjoying myself after and during.  Happy bloody days!  Thanks, Alexandra.  You are my new mentor-who's-never-met-me!

...uh?!

Currently reading Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. For those who haven't read it, it's a collection of descriptions of Sacks' neurology patients. I've just stumbled upon a pretty uncanny description of myself. Spooky!!

From now on, I am referring to myself as a "motor moron". Makes me sound like a crap transformer.

Sleeping Becky, Hidden Panties

 I struggled to nod off last night.  I felt like Sherlock Holmes, unable to sleep as I was ruminating on a mystery I simply couldn't solve (..I've been watching a lot of Elementary of late...).

I was stressed out and completely baffled at the fact that when I got into bed and slid my arm in between my pillows, my fist closed around a single pair of my own pants.  Now, I don't generally store my underpants under my pillow, or in any other kind of furniture other than a chest of drawers (drawers for my drawers), and I can't think of any logical reason as to why they would be nestling where I lay my head at night.  No sane person wants to wake up with their face buried in their own kecks.  

My mind ran over as many possibilities as it could conjure up, which weren't many, as it and I had been up early for a full day's work and now we both now badly needed to rest after a good couple of hours trying to keep up with the story line in Prison Break (Scylla is good now?? Actually, don't tell me, I want to find out for myself, even if I am years behind that rest of the world who have already seen it).  Because I was hell bent on getting to the bottom of the mystery of the sleepy knickers (ha, to the bottom!  I didn't even do that on purpose... lulz), my brain did what it usually does when it's required to do something it doesn't feel like doing - it went into snarky bitch mode.  Here are the suggestions it so helpfully threw up for me:

- The underpants gnomes from South Park are real.
- A has now taken to sniffing ladies' undergarments during his lie-ins.
- This particular pair of pants was being bullied by the rest of the underwear in my chest of drawers and decided to run away somewhere safe.
- I put them there one day, just incase we get robbed by someone who values underthings over technology and cash.
- I accidentally left them there, thinking I was putting them away somewhere else.

I'll be honest, the latter is the most likely explanation.  Just this week, I tried to put a customer's documents in the dish washer at work, and I have an inexplicable habit of automatically trying to put cartons of milk in the washing machine and laundry in the bin.  

I wish I could say that I do these things because my mind is on a higher plane, dealing with bigger issues, but the honest truth is that I'm usually just thinking about food and funny pictures of cats I've seen.  That, and I'm prematurely losing my memory.  The only thing that will make me feel better about my receding cognitive ability right now would be some amusing cat-based pictures and a snack.  

...Anyone?

(Image borrowed from...several sources on Tumblr...Tumblr loves a cat sandwich!)

LOOK!!!

Everybody stop what you're doing and appreciate this picture of a rat with a teeny tiny teddy bear! The cortex of my brain where the squee-motions come from ("squee" is too a real emotion!) just exploded.

(Pic borrowed from @Earth_Pics on Twitter)

Good Mor-AAAAAGH!!!

Hullo, interweb! I'm feeling a bit twitchy and face-punchy tonight, so I'm going to offload by telling you all about my morning. By the end of this post, you will know how this day and I got off on the wrong foot, and hopefully I will have had a nice chuckle to myself about its events in retrospect. Hopefully. Failing that, I will repeatedly run into a wall until I feel suitably calm/disorientated. I will post footage of it and become an overnight YouTube megastar. Win-win.

*clenches fists and exhales*

I awoke to the sensation of gentle sunlight pawing at my face through the blinds and lovingly prying my stuck-together eyelids open with its warm, affectionate fingers. A snored obliviously next to me as I attempted to will my lifeless arm back to the land of the living, as it had been smothered in the night by my unconscious head. Kind of like how Uma Thurman coaxes her toes back to life in Kill Bill.

"Wiggle you big...thumb."

I felt drowsy, calm and peaceful. And then confused. It was a Wednesday morning, wasn't it? Why was I feeling calm, drowsy and peaceful? Surely something was amiss?

And then I realised. I wasn't being beaten around the head by the usual sound of my alarm going off. I blearily peeped at my iPhone. It looked goofily back up at me, informing me that it was 10.30am exactly (the exact time I should have been walking through the doors at the office). I imagined it innocently cocking its head at me like a mentally subnormal spaniel.

snooze?

OHMYGODI'MLATEFORWORKTHEY'REGOINGTOKILLMEAAAAAGH!!!

"A, WAKE UP I'M LATE!!"

"So? Just get ready and say you're sorry. And stop calling me A. I have a name."

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, A, I CAN NEVER BE LATE, I'M GOING TO GET FIRED AND THEN THROWN IN THE RIVER TO SWIM WITH THE FISHIES!! THE PIRANI WILL EAT MY FACE!!"

"Calm down...Don't you mean piranhas?"

For the record. I hate being late. If anything, I am always socially unacceptably early to everything. I leave the house in a blind state of unfettered panic even if I am comfortably on time, just incase something catastrophic happens on the way to the thing I have to be at that might result in my lateness...

...Like my running over a person while rifling through my CD collection with one eye on the road (not that I ever do that. Honest.), or having to slow down because I think I've seen the three wheeler from Only Fools and Horses pass me by (I swear, I saw it by Tesco! If I see it again, I WILL take a picture).

Anyway, with one eye still crusted shut, I fumbled with my phone until the text message to my manager read something akin to

"FUCK, slept through my alarm, be there straightaway! I'm so so sorry!!!!"....Yeah, my company's cool...you can say "fuck" at the managers by text if the gravity of the situation calls for it...But I didn't have time to sit there and appreciate this happy fact.

Still wearing the knickers I slept in (don't judge me, I was having a breakdown. Am in fresh, new pants now, I promise!), I rooted around my floor-drobe for anything to cover my shame (aka "body") with. I then dug my hat from between the sofa cushions so that I could hide my un straightened hair - unaware that the part of my hair it most needed to cover stuck out in a... I'll call it a mullet with a kicky Farrah Fawcett flick...fashion at the nape of my neck. I bypassed make-up (by make-up, I mean my usual daily routine of "draw eyes back on in eyeliner"), I'm pretty sure I sprayed only one armpit with deodorant before I bolted out of the door to A's handy parting words:

"Don't crash!"

Always advisable when driving, that.

In the end, I arrived at work bang on half an hour late. Pretty mean feat considering I live approximately twenty five minutes away from the building I work in. Upon arrival, I was greeted by a roomful of people laughing at my pant-pissing facial expression and new tramp-chic, un showered look. I sheepishly sank into my chair and looked at the text I'd just received from the manager who hadn't even arrived yet.

lol. No worries.

Mr Bright Side

Today, a lot of people said their last goodbye to a friend. For many of us, it was a "my first funeral" kind of a day (I've been to one before, but it wasn't someone I knew closely, and I was too young to go to my dad's funeral). It looked like some surreal school reunion where the theme was black tie. Seeing a bunch of guys I grew up with, having been used to seeing them in school uniform made me feel like we were only playing dress-up and that the friend we were seeing off was going to pop round the corner at any minute and tell us we were dickheads for believing his silly joke.

The atmosphere was not how I expected it to be. People were pleased to see each other. It's not often that most of my school year gather in one place. There was a lot of joking and catching up as we waited for the ceremony to start, just like how it is on the annual boxing night festivities most of the school attend every year when they've come home for Christmas visits. The only difference here was the sudden jarrings in conversation as everyone remembered where we were and why we were there.

You can always of course rely on one clown to break some tension, for which I was hugely grateful. Today's clown had us howling with laughter as he

1. Walked in on and sat five minutes into the wrong funeral, only realising he'd made a mistake when the person leading the ceremony informed the room that they were there to remember Ethel.

2. Got drunk later in the evening and stumbled from group to group asking inappropriate but hilarious questions like some pesky drunken uncle.

The ceremony was perfect. The twin of the departed lead the speeches, which was pretty fucking brave. I hiccoughed and sniffled throughout the whole thing out of angst for him, the untimely loss of one of our number, and the fact that I knew that if I were in his shoes - if one of my sisters were in a coffin, I simply could not cope. Screw being brave and respectful. I would go to pieces. I can't even entertain the idea for a second.

We entered the crematorium to The Lord of the Rings theme, and left to Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. The stories told during the service were about the our friend's misadventures, the harmless trouble he would always get into, and the fact that the majority of us - if we were to put a bet on it, would never have put our money on him doing something so mundane and unspectacular as slipping away as he dreamt. The quirky exit tune summed him up brilliantly.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a pub that he used to work and drink in. It was lovely seeing so many familiar faces and hearing about how their lives after school are flourishing. People are climbing the career ladder, hooking up and sprouting children left right and centre. It made me happy to learn that the people I know and love are all getting along just fine in grown-up land. Seeing everyone together in one place, brought together by one person alone made me feel lucky to be part of such a web of caring, fun people. It was a shitty thing that brought us there, but it was also reassuring that no matter how far apart we've all drifted that we are all still connected.

I promise my next post'll be a silly one. I just needed to get today out of my system.

Here's a song for you to enjoy. I loved it before, but now it holds even more meaning for me:

Monty Python - Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

Why I Should Never Teach

Since leaving university with my fancy pants degree (i.e my incredibly expensive bit paper with ENGLISH typed onto it), roughly every six months or so, I decide that maybe I should share my bottomless wisdom with the world (pfft!) and give something back to society by becoming a teacher.  I think this has more to do with my freakish love for the educational system than any true vocational calling, as during these flirtations with career choice, I often forget that:

1. I'm terrified of most people, let alone children.  And when I do meet a child, I'm torn between stiffly patting them on the head, shaking their hand, or running madly around with them, gaining their trust and then proceeding to steal their sweets.  I don't have a natural affinity with those vertically challenged mites.
2. Even the mere prospect of public speaking makes me want to theatrically piss my pants just so that I can escape the situation.
3.  I have a serious problem with eye contact.  I can barely maintain eye contact with my nearest and dearest for prolonged periods.  How am I supposed to hold the attention of 30-odd kids or teens for an hour at a time?  And how will I know which kid is which if I can't bloody look at them?!
4. I use "colourful" language so often that curse words have become second fucking nature to me in my everyday twatting speech.  Fuck.
5. I am incredibly clumsy.  Accidents find me.  After thousands of pounds' worth of teacher training, I will be sacked on my first day for smacking a child full on in the face whilst making big hand gestures as I speak.  And if not for that, I will be forcefully escorted from the building for tripping over my feet and ended up landing face first in some poor, traumatised teen's lap. 

Further proof of how terrible a mentor to the adults of tomorrow I would be came today, when I was asked to show the new girl at work how some simple stuff is done in the office.  It turns out my natural approach to teaching is:

• Getting on with what I do normally, but at twice the speed to get the demonstration over and done with.
• Talking at lightspeed, without pause - therefore leaving no time for the new girl's questions but lots of opportunity for me to stammer and make even less sense than normal.
• In a frenzied bid to make new girl feel welcome, nodding way too much at everything she says and laughing like a nutter every time she opens her mouth:

N.G: "Could you pass me the stapler?"
Me: "HAHAHAHAHAHA!!...Oh.  Yes."

• In further bid to make new girl feel at home and reassured, every time she makes a small mistake, instead of correcting her, I word-splurge apologetically about it and hope she gets the point:

"No, we don't normally put that there, but fuck it, it doesn't matter - leave it there, it's a stupid rule anyway.  Filing stuff away.  Put it there.  Or wherever you want.  Sorry.  It's okay there. Or whatever. HAHAHAHA!"

Constantly tell new girl that I am a crap teacher and that "they" never should have trusted clumsy old me to show someone what to do. Don't know why they've not fired me yet.  Ho ho, ha ha.

Mess.



Think I'll stick to the pursuit of earning money with sweet, sweet words.  At least then I won't have to tell anybody what to do...

 

Apple Zombie

I have three hours to myself today before heading to the matriarch's for food and meeting a few friends to remember an absent friend. How have I chosen to spend these quiet few hours? By downloading iTunes to my PC, listening to playlists on the iPad using 8Tracks (brilliant app of you haven't got it!) and uploading music to my iPhone 4.

To Apple I pledge my soul, apparently!

What a sellout.

Hope you're all having a lovely Easter weekend.

More On A Passing

Hearing about a school friend's passing away the other day knocked something a bit off-kilter in my way of thinking.

I feel numb/almost shamefully indifferent about it one moment, and then I'll burst into tears of grief and shock in another. I've fallen asleep crying and woken the next morning with a sense of guilt that I don't feel as awful as is required of me. I don't think my brain knows what to do with the information that I'll never see that familiar face again. It doesn't know where to put it and therefore how to treat it. Right now, death to my brain is a mostly foreign body as I've not experienced it since the age of nine. Nearly sixteen years ago.

The news has made it dawn on me just how meaningless life is. And I don't mean that in a let's-just-slit-our-wrists-and-be-done-with-it kind of way. It's actually lifted a huge amount of pressure from my shoulders. I constantly berate myself that I'm not living life to the fullest. I'm not rich, I'm not super-skinny and model beautiful, and (the one I kick myself over the most) I'm not happy 24/7.

Only now it's hit me. In the end, you don't get brownie points or marks out of ten. There is no grade you have to make in order to pass or fail at life. No one is going to be there to give you a prize or a pat on the back. No reward follows death.

Sounds depressing as fuck, but this knowledge feels quite freeing to me. I spend so much time thinking that I'll need (insert thing here) in order to be happy and in order to make my life "worth it." That's basically my brain telling me "well you can't be happy now, because you don't have this thing yet! Let's obsess over that and then get depressed about the fact that you can't get it!"

Fuck it, though! Who cares? Even if I do make millions on writing some book, and even if I learn to overcome my self-sabotaging behaviour and my weird relationship with food, those things would be nice, but I'm not going to be around in the years following my slipping from this world flipping back through my achievements, smugly going "yeah, I did quite well, didn't I?" because I simply won't...be.

I know I'll continue to have mood swings, bouts of crushing insecurity and moments of head rending anxiety. The only difference now is that I finally accept that this is fine. Because it has to be. And I don't have to reach some emotional nirvana to simply get on with living my life as it happens. Sometimes life just plain sucks balls, and others it's great. You get what you're given and then you're gone. That in itself is more than enough for me - I won't fail at life, because I can't.

Egg Head

Taking my magnificent, egg-like forehead for a "run" along Aberavon beach today. Who needs Botox when you can just freeze your face off naturally? C'mon, Spring! Where you at,mun?!

Sad News, Gay Poem

I learned today that someone from my social circle and someone I more or less grew up maybe not exactly with, but in parallel with died in their sleep this week. The second I got home, I cried like a little kid and then felt immediately guilty for it because I don't feel that I was close enough to him to be allowed to feel the grief I did. I'm not his brother nor the housemate who went to wake him only to find that he couldn't. I've pissed around with him on nights out and made small talk with him at gatherings of mutual friends. He was silly, snarky and chilled, and the first person I know personally of my age group that has passed away.

The news shifted something in my perspective. My problems aren't problems at all. I should be grateful for what I have, because any one person in my life could be gone on the other side of tonight's sleep. I thought somewhere deep down that being relatively young meant that we were indestructible. Death was something that happened to people you don't directly know and the elderly. Not to you and your friends. Not now.

Sorry about the tone of today's post. No funnies today. Just a poem that he would have taken the piss out of me for writing. I think he would accuse it of being "gay." My thoughts are with and cannot stop drifting back to his closest friends and family.

The First Of Many

And so our little generation
Starts to show some wear.
You, the first thread plucked,
And with you ebbs away
A small but so incredibly significant
Trace of warmth.

We were indestructible once
In summers of "study"
Lying, basking fatly,
Our fingers spread between sun and metal.
Our minds between vodka softened then
And fresh, unmade now.

It would be you, court jester
To slip so quickly away
At the first bloom and fade
Of frightful, matte reality -

To go
And not like the the rest of us
Begin to truly know
That what comes next is nothing.
May you rest in peace.

Weekend Roundup: Sucky Faces, Superman & Foot Fluff

This weekend went a little differently to normal. The highlight of my Saturday was purchasing the very first vacuum cleaner I've ever bought myself - a Henry Hoover. One of the most grown-up purchases I've ever made, and I insisted that I needed it to have a face on it. Henry and I are getting along famously. He's nothing short of fricking awesome with his majestic, impressively sucky nose. I have hoovered the house twice in as many days, which is more times than I did aaaall last month! Maybe everything I dislike doing should have a big ole smiley face on it to up the novelty factor and make me do it. Can you put a smiley face on mornings?

Today, after vacuuming the house for the second time and settling myself down in front of the Xbox to gleefully sap all the productivity from my day off like sucking poising from a snake bite, I received a text from A. He needed a lift to A&E after training for his football (soccer) coaching course had gone a bit tits up for him. A tackle had left him unable to walk on one of his feet.

Got to the hospital where A was urged to bounce like a human pogo stick to the doctor's room to be prodded, poked, x rayed and sodomised (I don't know what they do in those rooms. Just hazarding a guess).

I'm fortunate in that I've rarely had to sit in the accident and emergency section of a hospital. And so on the rare occasions when I do have to go, I fully expect to be met with a gory scene of spraying blood and bawling adults rolling around on the floor in agony as their limbs dangle from their bodies, held on only by thin strips of flesh...Like a hammed up world war movie scene. Not so. Just a group of well behaved people politely obeying the unspoken, unwritten waiting room rule of "Thou shalt not speak....but though shalt quietly cough from time to time to prove that there is actually something wrong with you and that you deserve to be seen next".

I was in that waiting room for a good hour or so (quite speedy compared to the usual bellyaching you hear about the NHS....Politics, motherbadger! Go team NHS!) on my tod, and here is what I saw:

- Woman on crutches wearing a Superman hoody. Unsure if the hoody was intentionally ironic. Made me smile either way.

- Small child of unknown diagnosis (she had a bit of a puffy eye...allergic reaction?)torturing her littler brother by shouting "Iiiii'm infecteeeed!!" and running after him as he frantically tried to flee her diseased clutches.

- Teenager proudly showing off what looked like a large dog bite to a modest crowd of "oooh"ing people.

- Other teenage girl of a curvier stature in bum flashing denim hotpants and those fake-suspenders-type tights making the gaggle of pensioners present gasp and giggle like toddlers watching You've Been Framed (british clip show mostly featuring people falling over and accidentally flashing their pants - popular before we found Youtube and cat videos). "You can see her bottom, Doris!"

A eventually called me over to the waiting room he'd been wheeled to, and I got to see the INSIDE OF HIS FOOT WHERE ALL THE BONES ARE! I haven't seen many x-rays in my time either... and, and, I got to watch them put the plaster on his foot! Nurse practitioner declared that there is a little knobble on the x-ray that looks unusual and "a bit fluffy" (direct quote) and that we'll have to go back in and get it checked on again tomorrow to see if it's actually broken.

Next on the agenda for our Sunday adventure fun times was to rescue A's Volkswagen Golf from the leisure centre car park it was sitting abandoned in. As the only one of us with two functioning ankles, I had to drive A's car. To give you a background of my driving experience, it took me a year after passing my test to stop squealing like a pig whenever I hit a bump in the road, and every car I have owned was and is the power equivalent of a hair dryer...and not even a fancy, expensive hair dryer. In cars, instead of horse power, I opt for donkey power.

Ass power, if you will.

Compared with my car, A's Golf has the power of an army of asses, and I never want to drive it again, as I may inadvertently kill someone else or myself. You might have noticed that I have included less swear words in this post than normal...this is because in a fifteen minute drive, I've used up an entire week's quota of F-bombs and S...grenades (..?). A girl racer I will never be.

Anyhoo, home now, along with A and his fluffy foot. Any footballers out there, take heed - tackle correctly, or risk being the reason someone loses their footballing career to foot fluff. No one wants to be that guy.

*solemn head shake*

Here's a photo of the injured bit of the patient's anatomy. Please leave messages of sympathy, well-wishing or condolences for A's foot in the comments box below (please do! The attention might distract him for a moment so that I don't have to pick things up for him for a while. I'm trying to play on Tumblr. Cheers!)

Hope your weekend was smashing, darlings!

Taxes, Motherfucker!

Sorting out my taxes, because I'm one grown up motherfucker!

.... Once I've finished throwing back coffees and stopped taking pictures of how grown up I'm being.

Shit, this looks quite difficult, actually...

Game Of Thrones: A Belated Review

So, I've started watching Game Of Thrones. I'd heard from several sources that it's good and worth a watch..also that everyone on the planet has watched it and I'm the only one left to catch up.

That being said, I did do a bit of heel digging before I parked my bum on the sofa and finally gave it a go. Reason being that all reviews I had were from people who enjoy the female form in a different way to the way I do(I.e "yeah, it's really good! The women are so fit and there's loads of sex!! Oh the sex!!" Etc...kind of. It's not a direct quote...but feel free to use "oh, the sex!" In future if you so choose). All I knew about it was that I was about to subject myself to many hours of bare boobage. I knew nothing of the plot line or characters. For all I knew, it was about a bunch of kings and queens gaily flashing their genitalia at each other whilst a court jester danced around spanking their bare bottoms with a lute.

Or if I only had the title to go by, the world's first game of musical chairs.

I'm three episodes deep now. I'm in love with a ballsy, sword wielding child and have sworn that if I ever consider reproduction, I'm either having one of her or none at all. I've been introduced to a surprisingly eloquent prozzy boinking imp and yeah, rather a lot of boobs.

But, see, even the boobs are good! The boobs I'm being subject to are not the balloonish bubbles hanging off of painfully arched frames like the ones I'm accustomed to seeing in music videos and other forms of popular culture. The boobs of Game of Thrones are as human and unique to each girl as a fingerprint or a face. Boobs that aren't identikit floatation devices hoiked and strapped into place solely for men to look at. Boobs that make me look at them and go "yes! Mine don't stay put when I lie down either! I'm normal! NORMAL!!!"

I have nothing against surgically altered lady bubbles, as long as they are only bought for the woman wearing them's benefit. And that's another topic for another day. All I'm saying is that I'll continue to watch the band of grumpy faces and furry coats (and gawwwjuss dire wolves! I know they're meant to be badass, but aww, lookit the puppiiiiiieees!) to my heart's content, and it won't be in spite of the "look, boobies!!" factor. In fact, I will be mentally high fiving my shirtless sisters whenever I make eye contact with their many splendoured and varied nipples.

Hurrah!

Relationships: How To Make Yourself Miserable

1.  Analyze everything he/she says, because they obviously have an agenda.

2.  Tar all members of his/her sex with the same brush.  He/she is of that gender and therefore must be a liar/cheater/crazy bitch/emotionally needy person (circle as required).

3.  Refuse to trust a word he/she says, because someone with the same private parts (same kind - not exactly the same.  Too weird.  Penis twiiiins!!) hurt you this one time.

4.  Constantly worry about how you weigh up to their exes.  Sure, he/she is with you now - but they were with him/her before...so there must have been something they liked about them.  Something they had that you don't. 

5.  Spend every hour of every day wondering when he/she will figure out that you're not all you're cracked up to be and leave you when they realise how gross/dumb/ugly you are compared to the plethora of better people out there waiting for them.

6.  Your partner is being quiet/grumpy/distant: Blame yourself and rack your brains through the hundreds of things you might have done that made them this way.  Await your imminent dumping in between parroting "Are you okay?  Have I done something wrong?  Tell meee!!"

7.  Totally rely on the moods and affections of one person to act as the foundations of your already shaky self confidence.

8.  Don't do anything for yourself.  Only do what makes him/her happy.  Torture yourself if you feel you have failed in any way to do this.

9.  Forget to like yourself because you're too busy focusing on him/her.

10.  Forget that whatever happens between you two (great or horribly painful), you will eventually emerge from it okay.  Because, in the end, you have to be.

Want!!

Readers...help a bruddah out.

Where can I get my grubby, greedy mitts on this in the UK??

Why Sleep Is Bad For You (Me)

Britain is a nation that when not discussing the weather or food, it is talking about how much sleep it's had. We refuse to win when it comes to catching some ZZZs. The number of ZZZs accumulated are always either too few, resulting in caffeine induced mood swings, or too many, resulting in the sleeper being "over tired" upon waking - That strange phenomenon where you sleep so much that it knackers you out. Another term for this condition is "being a student". I am allowed to say this because I used to be one. Not bitter or anything about no longer being one.

Boo you students.

God, I miss drinking snakebites at midday...Made everything so much more interesting.

As I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I've clocked up an impressive amount of hours in the sack this past fortnight because I seem to be on a run of late-starting shifts where I get to rise from my crypt after nine o clock before having to head to work.

Score. Or so I thought.

Getting at least eight hours of coma time a night has not been the refreshing, health-giving experience I'd expected. Quite the opposite. Since starting my run of lie-ins, these things have happened:

- I have developed some kind of aggressive cold that is making my throat, ears and nose itch on the inside, turning me into a meat sack of itchy fury that sounds like it chain smokes.

- I've not been allowed to complain that I've slept too much. Turns out people don't like people who don't appreciate the fact that they've been allowed to linger in bed longer than them. What gives?

- My brain has melted into some kind of jellyfish that cannot function in daylight hours. It only wakes up at about 4am, when it showers me with an array of disturbing dreams that make me question my sanity.

- I have had no motivation whatsoever to move my body any more than is absolutely necessary. And by necessary, I mean when I need to bring food to my face.

Don't sleep, kids. It's bad for you. Because at least when you're kicking your mind's ass with Red Bull, it's stressed enough to think thoughts deeper than "That was a weird dream I had last night. Is lunch soon?"

Picture pretty much sums up last night's festivities. House party followed by boogies at a gay bar. Met some new people, was told by a white, homosexual gentleman that I "dance alright for a white girl" and stroked the inside of a dead hare's face. Standard.

Wet Dreams and Happy Meals

I know! I know why I can't write anything good this week!

I've dreamed all of my mojo away. Wet dreams of creativity, if you will. I've spent the past few nights enthusiastically beating my forehead with my fists for ideas, and now I realise why they're not happening!

You recall my post about the fucked up dreams I've been having? Well, I've been working late shifts at the office for the last couple weeks, which start closer to midday than actual, terrifying, soul-draining morning. This means a fortnight of nine hour sleeps for this she-thing. I'm so well rested physically that I could run up the walls and scurry across the ceiling if I wanted to.

Trouble is that mentally, I'm even less perky than normal. Add this to my total lack of common sense that I'm blessed with on my "surprisingly well-functioning" days, and I'm basically a mindless terrier, shaking with pure energy.

All of my creative (for want of a better word) thoughts are going into giving me dreams so lucid and disturbing that I have to talk myself back down to reality every time I hear the alarm clock. Last night, I dreamed that A decided that we needed to buy a flat. In an ex mental asylum. That was kind of still a mental asylum (for want of a more p.c term) with actual horror movie mentals still living in it. I've also had another one where I had a heart attack whilst at my day job cleaning my mum's mansion (fyi - she lives in a modest 2 bed semi-detached abode and cleans for a living herself. No mansions) and couldn't call for any help because at that precise moment, I lost my voice. When suddenly I woke up at 4am panting and palpitating, my first instinct was to run to the bathroom and check in the mirror to see if I was looking a bit heart-attacky.

Seriously, brain. What?!

I've come to the conclusion that sleep is bad for me and that I should no longer do it. I hereby renounce sleep.

On an unrelated note, here's a picture of a tiny mouse thing that a human child (A's niece. I haven't neglected to inform you of any spawning on my part) gave me from her McDonald's Happy Meal, because she thought I'd enjoy it more.



Lookit its cyoot little FACE!!

Chill. The Fuck. Out.

I have a post for you! Yippee hooraaay! After my previous plea for inspiration, I decided to give up on blogging completely for the evening by forcing myself to do something that I rarely do. Relax. There are only two activities that can make this pent up ball of "aaagh!" chill out, and I can't do one of them because he's sleeping (haha, I can hear you sicking up in your mouths as I type!), so I did the other - I took a bath. At eleven at night when I should really be sleeping too. It's way past my bed time, you guys.

A good chunk of my post ideas come to be while I'm in the bath or shower - now there's a mental image that'll stick with you. Sorry! Something about being immersed in skin sloughingly hot water makes my mind go a bit melty round the edges, freeing it of all my usual self inflicted destructive thought patterns (I'm not joking - my brain's voice is like the Magic Roundabout theme. Deeply unsettling and without apparent end.), so that the ideas get a shot at swimming to the top.

I wasn't exaggerating when I said that there is very little that I can do to relax. I think I was born without that bit of the brain. If I'm not doing something productive, then I'm losing precious seconds as I'm forever inching closer and closer to death and GOOD GOD, DO SOMETHING NOW, FOR YOU COULD DIE AT ANY MOMENT!! ACHIEVE STUFF IMMEDIATELY!!!!

So, naturally, most typically "relaxing" activities aren't for me. I will give you some of my reactions to things that are supposed to calm people down and make them all peaceful and shit:

- Reading a book: I like that character! I HATE that character! Actually, they're alright now. Even kind of loveable. Wait. Why are bad things happening?! Aww, it all worked out in the en-.....WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DIED??

- Jogging: I'm doing great! Look at me go! Lovely day, nice smooth road....getting a bit out of breath now, actually. Must have got quite far...keep going...all good...fuck...have to stop. Get breath...back.

*turns around*

How can I still see my front door from here?!

- Listening to slow music: So many emotions!! Who did this to you to make you so sad? I will hunt them down and kill them for you and we will run off into the sunset begin a new life together!

- Watching TV: Wasting time wasting time wasting time...why aren't I doing anything productive? Maybe if I clean something while I watch it, it'll alleviate the guilt...

*knocks over lamp with arse as turns around to watch pivotal scene*

Ah, fuck. Forgot I couldn't multi task. Wait. What happened? Did someone die? Stupid lamp!!

- Comfort eating: I LOVE FOOD SO MUCH, IT MAKES ME WANT TO DANCE!!....I feel sick.


I think it's pretty evident that I am not a chilled out person, and I don't expect I'll ever be. At twenty five, I think I am an adult equivalent of a toddler bombing around the house between fits of crying, raging, snacking and uncontrollably laughing until they eventually pass out suddenly at the end of each day from pure exhaustion... Only to arise wise the sun and do it all again, much to their long suffering family's detriment. And I think I'm alright with that. Sometimes. Maybe. I mean, should I be alright with that? Or is it bad for my health? Maybe I should Google it. Ooh, I haven't watched 30 Rock yet, have I? No, TV is laziness and laziness is wastefulness. I'm hungry. Is it midnight already??

*collapses*

S.O.S

I have serious writer's block, peeps.  Help!


What do you want from meeee??

A Fun Game

Okay. So. I'm off the Eng-uh-lund for a night out tonight as the tag-along girl on a lad's (haha iPad keeps changing "lad's" to "lady's" ...sassy little tablet!) night out. I was going to do a post about general drunken behaviour or something along those lines, but I'm now thinking I'll opt for something a little more interactive. You can play along!

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to...The Pisshead Checklist....Gaaaame!

Fine, I'll never win my millions by thinking of names for board games. It's simple. I'm going to list the typical things I've been known to of a night out, and when I get back, I'll tell you which happened. Whoever guesses the most correctly wins..something. Awesome points. Here goes. Will I....?

1. Accidentally offend someone by mimicking their accent. What? People like that, don't they??

2. Buy rounds of drinks for people I don't/ barely even know because I'm drunk. And drunk me doesn't think money is real. And that shots buy people's love.

3. Fall over in my excitement because "they're playing my song!!!" FYI all of Drunk Becky's songs are her song.

4. Decide that I should be someone's wing man and "help them out" by shoving them into circles of strange women.

5. Make bff's with a woman in the toilets that I've never seen before and will never see again.

6. Attempt to make small talk with the bar staff:

What I think I'm saying: "good evening, sir! I hope your shift is a pleasant one. May I have a Strongbow?"

What bartender hears: "hahaha, hi! Have you seen my shoes? I like your face! Drink! Strongbow!! Dancing, hurry HURRY!" *hurls fistful of coins in bartender's direction and clacks back to dance floor*

7. Dance with my arms getting higher and higher as the night progresses until I am just thrashing with my palms to the ceiling.

8. Promptly have a mental breakdown at 3a.m. Kind of like Cinderella. But instead of my dress turning to rags, my thin veneer of sanity falls away, leaving me gasp-sobbing totally unprovoked. Until I hear MY SONG, immediately cheer up and return to the dance floor.

9. Dance-off.

10. Despite the fact that I shrink away from other people's cameras like that witch from The Wizard of Oz (I'm meeeltiiiiing!!) in my sober state, I leap into other people's photographs like I've been let out on day release.

11. Claim that I'm "channelling" a celebrity. So far, I've been Kesha, Beyonce, Will Smith and Bear Grylls. Whoever could be next?

12. All of the above.



......my bet's on number 12.


EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY DRESS!!!

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Lesbians & Rednecks

So, my attempts to win A's attention over the Xbox failed. Can't think where I went wrong. I was trying to be romantic!

Me: Hey. Hey. *poke* Hey!

A: What?

Me: Would you still love me if I had no teeth?

A: No.

Me: Are you thure? Look! Look how thexy thith ith!

I continue to gum "sexily" in front of A until I eventually get bored and wander off for attention elsewhere. Facebook entertains me for five minutes while a friend tells me about a near fatal tooth brushing accident she had today (birds of a feather stick together). I make sure that the bleeding has stopped. She assures me it has. I tell her to keep me updated if she does feel she might die tonight and move on to Blogspot.

And now here I am!! I came here to talk to you because I know you'd love me even if I had no teeth in my mouth and a big, bald head full of spots! Heh.

...I mean, you would, wouldn't you?

Truth be told, I wasn't sure what I'd write about because I'm still going through some kind of Tina Fey obsession that's taking up a worrying amount of my time and mental processes. So, I thought I'd go for that usual small talk that people just love to hear!

1. The weather: It's Wales. It's cold. It's wet. Next!!

2. Dreams: I have an overactive imagination (yes, it's true!!), and this still rings true while I'm sleeping. I don't tend to get the ones about flying or falling. Mine tend to veer more on the psychotic and weirdly detailed side than that. Funnily enough, the most recurring one I get is a frighteningly vivid one about all my teeth falling out. Huh. Am I seeing into the future? A never seems to be in them, so maybe I am!

Anyway. For any hip and funky wannabe psychoanalysts out there care to take a wade through the murky, piranha infested depths of my sleeping brain, here are a few recent gems. One with a highly accurate pictorial version at the bottom of this page. Oh, how I spoil you so!

Dream #1: I am at a trendy, dark bar full of beautiful, sophisticated lesbians in their thirties, as this is my age and sexual orientation now. Bit of a surprise because I thought I was a hetero in my mid twenties, but hey ho, sometimes you skip a decade and wind up in a gay bar for the gorgeous *hair flip*. Who am I with? Oh, I remember now! I'm with my best friend Holly - wait...my wife Holly. Funny how you forget these things! We've come out (see what I did there? SEE IT?!) on one of our nights out, leaving behind our home full of cats (really, brain? Can you get any more stereotype-y??). What a laugh we have at these things! Such fun, isn't it Holly?

...Holly? Oh, Holly's over the other side of the room fawning over some tall, blonde giantess in a black and silver sparkly bra. They must be friends. I'll go over to say hi. Maybe she's my friend too.

Holly: "Hmm? Oh. Sorry. I like this girl now. She has a better bra on than you."

Me, dumstruck: "Oh.."

Holly: "And I want a divorce."


Dream #2: At home with A and a few others because I live in shared accommodation, just like I did in uni. A's got a friend staying over with us. A timid, bird-like girl who won't come out of her room. Aren't we nice, housing the cripplingly shy like this? So nice. I head up to my room to do some blogging after a long day's sitting around. Bird Girl peeps her doe-eyed face around her door frame and "pssts" at me to come in and talk to her. I'm touched that she wants to speak with me. Perhaps I can coax her out of her shell by giving her a make over by taking off her glasses like in those films I used to watch as a teenager. Oh, wait, she doesn't have glasses. We can get her some glasses and then dramatically take them off!

Me: "What's up? You okay?

Bird Girl: "I'm okay. I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

Me: "Yeah? Why?"

Bird Girl: "I slept with your boyfriend."

Me, baffled: "Oh right...How come?"

Bird Girl: "He said we needed to sleep together to see if there's any chemistry, so I'm staying over for a bit to see if it works out between us. Is that okay?"

Bird Girl looks so adorable and timid that I can't help but laugh and pat her on the tiny head.

Me: "It's okay, I'm not angry."

I hug Bird Girl and serenely leave the room as forgiving and placid as an angel. Or Jesus. I am girl Jesus. I float down the stairs, saving my strength ready for when I beat the living shit out of A for making Bird Girl feel bad about herself.


Dream #3: I am the host of a gameshow. The contestants are heavily stereotypical rednecks. I ask them multiple choice questions, and if they get enough right, they win their children back.


What do these dreams say about me? Anyone want to hazard a guess? Or am I better off not knowing?

So.....

Heeeey guuuuys... I promise you that I was going to write an awesome, mind-blowing blog post tonight, I really was, honest.... But I've just found out that I am the last person on the planet to discover how brilliant 30 Rock is, and I am now in some kind of weird Tina Fey vortex thing, and I can't stop eating frozen yogurt, sooo...

...yeah. There's that. Picture evidence?