home is where your underwear smells like fried potatoes

It's been one month since I moved into my new space where it's christmas year-round and mini ponies shit on the sidewalk to my doorstep, and I'm pleased to say it's already starting to feel like home! Today the eminently terrifying Romanian girl with whom i share a kitchen not only leant me two onions but also insisted I try an entire cutlet of the pork she made for dinner. Maybe it doesn't seem like a tale worth telling but this is the same girl who on day 3 of my tenancy I was certain would have decked me for very stupidly having used one of her plastic bowls which I thought was communal. Imagine that! A flapping piece of piggy flesh acting as a metaphorical olive branch! Putting money down that by next month we'll be braiding each other's hair and slamming bubblegum daiquiris at the local TGI Friday's. Watch this space. 

Train home from dads today. Got lost and ended up in some terrifying suburb where you definitely wouldn't want to stay for longer than absolutely necessary. But I'll tell you what, I found this little gem that seems  to shamelessly recall one of my great loves and suppliers of Kentucky Fried popcorn Chicken.  This one advertises "a unique taste" and offers not only burgers but also indian cuisine so I'm thinking about going back.

I digress. 

One of my first orders of business moving to Dartford (or as my black operations pocket telephone coincidentally autocorrects "Fartford") was joining a gym. Physical activity is the only way I can combat my natural tendency toward a very bad attitude. I found a no frills spot where I can push around iron slabs for £20.99 a month.  No poser males sporting armpit cutout tank tops to their waist apparently unintentionally revealing pepperoni sized nip slips to other patrons while admiring their own reflection. One of the reasons I suppose it's so cheap is that there's minimal staffing. Instead of someone manning the desk, there are two "pods" separating the outside from the inside of the premises: 

You enter a personal code to get in, the small cylindrical pod opens up from one side, you step in, the sliding pod door closes behind you, and then the sliding door opens permissibly in front of you allowing you to walk out. So basically for a fraction of time the capsule holds you captive in that space designed to be tight so people don't sneak in twos.  It's enough to make a claustrophobe poop his pants which I guess is what happened the other day when I found myself trapped in said vessel and obliged to the stench of the last person's fermented colon contents. It was so pervasive my eyes are still watering. 

Fartford. 

Did you ever suffer that recurring nightmare during childhood where you showed up to school fully unclothed? I have been having a biweekly nocturnal scare where I am roused to find my bare ass poking out from underneath the duvet, on full display for my bosses to see. The grossly unsettling thing about this is that moments later I actually wake to find my actual arse (not just my dreamed one) poking out from beneath the covers and facing west toward the hospital only a few hundred meters away where my bosses COULD be. Like, if there were no walls my bosses would actually be able to see my butt. It's like a totally fucked up merging of my subconscious with reality. 

I sleep on a twin bed with an unstable headboard that gives way to the pressure of my back against it merely from sitting up to read a book. You can't imagine how annoying this is. Like, you are a headboard and you have ONE JOB. The hospital pillow gives no neck support which means tossing and turning against its synthetic fibers that squeak to the pattern of my shiftiness.  I’m so flat in bed I can’t breathe and wonder whether I may be cardiopathic????? I have to stuff my Hungarian down duvet (which I obviously supplied myself) under my neck to use it as a pillow and sleep in my robe for survival.  

I did my first load of laundry here - a typically enjoyable activity - that now makes me cringe with anticipatory dread. I did a 14 minute power boil of my clothes so as to minimize the chance of infection by cross contamination of strangers' pubic hair. I mean, can you imagine how many people must have washed their sticky unmentionables in this drum? Only worse,  I hung my own out to dry just outside the communal kitchen and all my panties ended up smelling like fried potatoes. I blame the romanian. I hope she doesn't read this. 

metaphorical car crash

It's been four months and a lot has happened. 

I spent much of it in a daze, doing things like putting the nespresso capsule straight into the mug and pouring boiling water over the top of it.

My life also turned into a metaphorical car crash. 

Speaking of which, I walked past this vehicle in Peckham recently. Probs not the best advertising for your Premier Driving School.  

Do you remember that tiny hand to hold? There have been further episodes to corroborate my feeling that these walls have eyes. Volume on:

(my inclination was that with two tiny pieces of tape on that cabinet, whatever was in there would have remained in there.)

In January I went on a ski trip with friends to Austria which turned out to be a complete disaster save for these Biggie Smalls snowboarding socks. 

But praise the celestial bodies for this absolute gem of a human who intercepted me in Tulum in February:

Between the green juice, tacos, bike rides, beach walks, mayan ruins, cenotes, tequila boom booms, sandy naps, questionable cacao and coconut "happy balls" and a mayan energy healer who exorcised me physically and emotionally, I returned to London with a levity and joy I hadn't known since my teenage years. 

I came back to London for just enough time to work a hectic stretch of night shifts, only to fly back across the atlantic home to california to celebrate my mother's 70th birthday in march. She is not only an engineer, but also the most resourceful person I know. When I lamented not having a reclining lawn chair in the backyard, she brought a chair out from the garage and built me this not so beautiful but highly functional sunbathing contraption:  

But the joy ride was over soon enough as upon my return to London I had to pack up my belongings for the seventh time in 2.5 years and move out. Though you'll have to read the tell-all for the details on that, my lovely fiancé NUMERO DOS and I decided to go our separate ways, which, heartache aside was a massive pain in the ass. We remain friends however in the course of the move had a few mutual fits of rage that resulted in myself manically packing up all my books into heavily sealed boxes, such that I now have nothing to do with my spare time other than refresh instagram every 37 seconds or make another piece of toast with jam. The first set of assets divided was the alcohol, and you bet your ass I took all the tequila. Other than a consortium of failed relationships, the only things i've collected over the years seems to be tequila and some art, which are now all living in a storage unit until I find a more permanent place to call home once I finish my residency early August.

In the meanwhile, I am living here: 

So cry for me, pray for me. Do whatever you have to do. I am 34 and living in a hospital dormitory  that smells like a charity shop and is too small to contain even my tiniest g-string. 

I share a bathroom with one other person who doesn't exist, so on a positive note one could say I have my own en suite. On the other hand, I didn't have anyone to ask for help when I couldn't figure out how to switch the tap from bath to shower so had to spend the earliest days shaped like a tripod, splashing my butt aimed at the faucet with water as if I were a bird in a bath, and sort my hair out with entire cans of dry shampoo. The dormitory is so small that the whole thing turns into a steam room when you bathe and as such I had to crack the window (LITERALLY CRACK the window, which i guess they limit the opening of out of fear we'd jump from height given the chance). Anyway, within seconds this thing crawled in:

I mean, there is no other way to say it than 

FUCK THAT SHIT>

I don't mean to be a scrooge, but there is a common area which- considering it's now May  - is perhaps overly festive when it comes to symbols of Christmas:

There are not one but TWO Christmas trees. See if you can spot them! 

The kitchen was marketed as "fully stocked" which is why I left my gold leaf pink champagne saucers in storage. Unfortunately the only option for drinking wine is out of a mug, bowl, or plastic picnic champagne glass. So that's what I do these days.

I have to admit I found a glimmer of joy when I went for a run around the new neighborhood and found these meadows and this mini pony just around the corner. Meadows and mini ponies are the personification of my ideals on love which is why i'm accepting this as a positive omen. 

While all my friends are buying houses, I'm buying bleach for the community toilet. But I have found a pub that sells pints of Guinness for only 2.50, so while the car might appear crashed on the outside, the engine's still running a full tank of diesel and I still have no plans to call the Premier Driving School. 

a hand to hold

i appreciate that the massive delay volunteering life updates may be leaving all two of you feeling out of the loop lately. I have been so busy and stressed that writing formally about my problems has taken a back seat to texting about them, to the point my autocorrect has been rewriting "xmas" to "xanax". 

i am home alone right now drinking a beer, trying to come up with a plan of how I can rationalize opening and consuming the entire bottle of cliquot in my refrigerator at 4:02pm on a Monday. Usually I do work, but today I was off because I had an exam. I am 34 years old and still taking exams and there is no sign of them stopping and I think I am disappointed with my career and life choices.

There is something rustling in the walls of the laundry room. I'm certain it is a rat.  I have been ignoring these sounds for months because my subconscious preferred it that way, but recently there was this tiny hand poking out from under the crack of the water heater cabinet and now I'm finding it hard to ignore the evidence. How festive considering I didn't get to see the Nutcracker this year!

Did you get any nice gifts over the holidays? I got my period for Christmas! I also got anemia ! Treated myself by eating a year's worth of spaghetti bolognese and lasagne over the last few days because i started hormone pills to calm down the anemia and now i can't resist all things carbohydrate or fried (WHY CAN'T I GET A HOT DOG ON A STICK AROUND HERE?!).  In addition to a £400 gold plated Dyson hair dryer (i am so embarrassed) I also got some 20's stuffed into an envelope from my darling mother, so decided to splurge on some hair balm after receiving a free sample of this miraculous coconut scented splooge from SpaceNK. I was confronted with a bit of a battle online when I tried to buy it and couldn't figure out if this was the same product I'd massaged into my split ends, or if this was actually a shoe horn? Door stopper? loose IKEA part? lightbulb? JBL's Creature Speakers?  i don't know. I didn't study marketing but i'm just not sure this is the best image to help consumers understand their purchase.

I have learned my mother is a boss at Jenga, though she attributes any increment of my own apptitude to having previously played the game and "knowing which blocks to choose" as well as having "glued in" other blocks to sabotage her attempts at winning. best part is the way she stacks the last block in the final video. 

In other news, I recently went to Jordan which was amazing save for the fact I lost my favorite comb at the dead sea and as a result had to buy a new emergency brush from a convenience store which cost me 75¢. It hardly feels right juxtaposed with the £400 gold plated hair dryer but I LOVE THIS BRUSH. The only thing is that every time I aim to detangle my hair and my hands are wet with the coconut splooge, all the metallic pink comes off on my palms and stains them along with anything else i touch, forever. That includes my clothes, my computer, my sonicare toothbrush, my dresser, all the doors in the house, etc. All Jordanian Convenience Store Pink now! Here's some pics from the other stuff though. Nice , magical place. Good hairbrushes. you should totally go.

My final days days of 2018 were spent fishing my smartphone out of a hospital toilet filled with wee after it fell out of my scrubs during an on-call shift. it's all just one giant metaphor to my dismal existence. 

hope you all had a merry xanax and a happy new year. 

the cat has a fever

I am searching for someone to help me understand the incursion of women on social media posting videos of themselves lip syncing, almost invariably whilst driving a car. WHY is this happening??? lip syncing is not a talent, neither is having wheels with a leather interior. 

I have become acutely aware of this phenomenon because I started commuting to work at a distance that would require a motor vehicle. And frankly I deserve a blimmin' trophy or cash prize for having survived one week despite having to drive on the wrong side of the road, sit on the opposite side of the car, and change gears with a non dominant and wildly uncoordinated left arm.  Not only does this itself require great focus, but the amount of speed cameras littered throughout British roads requires a fixation on the odometer so grand that it could herniate my brain through the hole of my own skull. Therefore, how is it that an (unapologetically vain and often vacuous) person can operate a car (in the first place, I wonder) while 1) simultaneously listening to music 2) instagramming themselves 3) disregarding the road in favor of ensuring premium lighting in their own live video ?  It is not only dangerous but unmistakably stupid. Even more baffling is why people like to watch this stuff. 

Speaking of stalking, do you ever get the feeling that instagram is using your microphone to spy on you? My suspicion grows and I am certain this is more than just confirmation bias. Earlier this week I demanded Ian pick me up some ultra mega tampons, and within a few hours was faced with the following advertisement:

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!

I have been something extra moody lately so have been attempting to up my exercise regime. I tried to get back into yoga, showing up at 6:30pm in my flip flops mostly keen for the best part which, if you've ever done yoga you know is Savasana. google it. But on arrival I was refused entry because I was 12 hours late and everyone had already gone home.  So i dragged my ass back to my house (feeling extra sorry for myself) to grab my shoes with the intention of going for a run, but ended up on the sofa eating 300 grams of semi-soft brie alone. When I eventually made it to class at the correct time, my experience was anyway corrupted by a repeat offender of gas emission from the anus. Not only is this yoga, this is HOT yoga. The heaters are on full blast and we have been facing a tenacious heat wave so a fart in a humid and crowded room is an antisocial and disruptive move at best.  I'm still in a bad mood. 

Going back to the topic of cheese- does anyone have a hack on how to clean the cheese grater? I invariably fail at this endeavor, ending up with a pile of grated sponge that then requires me to grate more cheese to remove the shredded sponge from those tiny holes.

As I said before, I have just started a new job rotating through the primary care setting. My experience in GP land while in medical school was on the order of a lady coming in to ask for advice about her cat who had a fever. I wish I had all the answers. In my attempt to do so I think I inadvertently found the answer to the original question. I am obsessed with watching this girl sing in the car. So can someone help me find her so we can be friends?