gone nuts

The problem with sunny days in London is that there is a duty to enjoy them. I mean,  I really don't want to complain because the winter here has massacred me, but I cower in the face of randomized meteorological glory because the obligation to carpe diem is too great that I am often left paralyzed. Today I got up and went for a walk and had a 99 Flake, but then came home and fell asleep from 2:45 to 5:45 and woke up in a sweaty pool of self loathing. Ian tried to placate me by assuring me that I clearly needed the rest, however I knew deep down that the real reason I passed out was because I ate a massive bowl of cereal and a piece of chocolate bread (?!) which lulled me into a deep coma. Not only did I wake up hating myself for having lost the day, but if you've ever fallen asleep after a carbohydrate overdose particularly on a hot day then you KNOW the sense of confusion and dry mouth and feeling of having been hit by a double decker. It's just not right. 

To try my best to remediate I am now sitting in the backyard eating a glass of  liquid bread Montepulciano d'Abruzzo alone for dinner and publicly crucifying myself. Somehow this works, even though I have a kamikaze fruit fly floating on the top layer of this nectar. I can't fish it out because my glass is too tall and narrow and the wine has reached the bottom of the vessel and my chubby fingers dangle in through the orifice but can't quite reach. Speaking of which, I have recently taken up the hobby of drinking alone! Not sure if this is socially acceptable once you reach a certain age, but anyway I likey! I would be happy for company but my man is at work bringing home the bacon and nobody has called me to hang out which begs the existential  question- where are my friends? Do I have any friends? 

I drank alone for the first time on the Queen's birthday a few weeks ago. I actually didn't know it was her birthday but saying so I feel justifies the nascency of my new hobby. It happened like this- Ian went to work early on a Saturday and it was another one of those glorious sporadic sunny days in London that hurled me into must-do panic. We had an open bottle of prosecco from a few days prior and because I am not a wasteful person, I made a mimosa. And then I made another one. And then another one. And then I finished the bottle. My mood improved with each glass! N E way, Queenie is a boss. 

Last weekend was cold and shitty which made making plans  less stressful.  Rented out a hot tub with a motor and a rudder and sailed the seas of Islington. I highly recommend this to anyone trying to kickstart their social life. You will be the highlight of every instagram story and if you organize you may be able to convince some cool people to hang out with you finally! 

Since recently shacking up with my Jesus look-alike beau, I have tried my best to become a born again domestic goddess. I had abandoned this whilst a single lass out on the lash. I do really enjoy cooking and hosting dinner parties, but these gender roles have also landed me on the floor of my kitchen coloring like a child , only the canvas is now a (?)poo-stained bed sheet and the crayon a giant Vanish stain remover stick. Tongue still out just the same to aid in concentration. 

The other thing that has stood the test of time is my stupid-ass autocorrect that still after eight years of having an iphone corrects "Olivia" to "Okivia". This and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Styrofoam. Which is remarkably similar in consistency to a prawn cracker whose true ingredients engineers and myself have yet to crack. 

Anyway, talking of coloring, some six year old twat recently stole my identity. Over a period of about four days I received 67 emails from an electronic library of books checked out and returned in my name. I knew it wasn't me because first off I can barely read but also because (no offense to these authors) these books judging on their cover must be  none other than incontestable shite:

Traveling with a Hamster

The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas

Gangsta Granny

Spy Dog

The 1000 Year Old Boy

What Not To Do if You Turn Invisible

Umm... just. NO.

OOOO! I just remembered something I wanted to say. Have you ever tried a nasal spray decongestant? Because this is the motha fuckin revolution people. You don't even realize how much better life can be until you snort some of that crap and suddenly your life has meaning and purpose again. 

I digress. 

Back to the original conversation about not having any friends, I have recently tried my hand with critters in lieu of persons. I had noticed a squirrel pouncing around the backyard now and then so one day I threw a piece of bread at it which it did not like. But then I threw a nut. And then I placed a nut near him. And then he took a nut from my hand. And now he thinks we're cohabiting: 

He walks in like he owns the place and his entitlement has escalated so quickly and resolutely that even when we stomp and yell and try to chase him out of the house he just stands there and looks up at us like this: 

I think I may love him but he is taking advantage and now I don't know what to do.

What I do know though is you should try to be passionate in everything you do.

Enjoy the sun folks, even if it takes a xanax 

all ears

I have been observing my friend Tosin lately. I have been observing Tosin because he is so happy and social and pleasant all the time and as such, a role model for me because I am self aware enough to know that I am negative and dull and a victim of my own life all the time. In observing him this winter I have, at the crux of spring, discovered the secret to his happiness:

TINY EARS that filter out all the bullshit.

N E way, since the last time I wrote I have become engaged to be married. 

saywhat?
!

Yea. I know. That was fast right? It happened in the luxurious atoll off the south west coast of Sri Lanka where the ham tastes like fish and the fish tastes like ham. I asked my guy why the hell he would want to do that and he responded with "you're pretty." So I shrugged my shoulders and said "ok" and two weeks later I have effectively transplanted all my crap into his residence and even implemented my "feminine touch" which is code for "IMMEDIATELY take all your man junk to the local charity shop and leave it there forever". He apparently likes it, surmising that this place was ready for a makeover. It seems as though I have found my match. 

I am getting used to a new habitat (again). The freezer in this house is so cold that when I attempted to take the gelato lid off the tub tonight, I ripped straight through the styrofoam. This meant I had to finish the entire tub of gelato because otherwise it would have gotten freezer burn in the future. Also, my man is really into technology and has all sorts of avant garde stuff like a virtual reality device and a central heater and lighting system that connects to your iphone so you can turn up the heat on your way home from work. Because of this i tend to ignore the random bits of electronic equipment I see floating around. But the other day I almost crucified him when I asked what the  thingy was at the entry way of the flat and he told me it was a surveillance camera. I almost lost my shit. "YOU HAVE A NANNY CAM AND WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A KID?!". Do you know how much insubordinate dancing I do in the living room? I can't bear this being recorded. Next thing I knew, the thingy had vaporized from the sideboard, no questions asked. But i remain reluctant because who knows where he has installed it as an alternative. My beau is a former secret agent. Have I previously mentioned this? I am not supposed to tell anyone but instead I tell everyone that his former career was working in intelligence for Britain's equivalent of the secret service. I am already regretting having publicly shared this, but then again I am still mad about the nannycam so whatevs. Now you know. 

Has anyone ever noticed that British phone numbers are interminable? I mean, country code excluded, there are ELEVEN digits. Countless psychological experiments have shown that the average number of numbers a human can remember is seven digits. Why  on earth are there eleven digits? There are seven digits in the american phone number plus 3 for a city area code. But still, that's only ten digits and britain has 11 and america could fit 40 britains in itself. So how does one explain this kind of lunacy? 

as an additional observation, not only are british people the only population I have seen to consistently run with their backpacks on, they also go cycling with their testicles out.  

I have been having some crazy dreams lately. Some mix of eating too much garlic before bed, being particularly stressed at work, and my everyday munged up brain. More often than not i dream about work-related hypothetical catastrophes, but lately I have had freaky intercalated visions of having my left tit bedazzled. I suspect this may be indicative of a subterranean yearning for a career change .

Which reminds me, I have just finished reading Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy is a dark and miserable twat and I'm really not sure why I keep torturing myself with his musings. One thing I noticed is his inveterate use of the word "invalid' (SEVEN times in three tiny pages) as a single equivalent noun for the handicapped. Does this not beautifully underscore how politically incorrect even the archaic english language is? I thought bootylicious was rogue. Do they really think we can in 2018 still be fooled by pronunciation of invalid as IN-VUH-LID to describe a person made weak by illness or injury? Isn't it so obvious that it is an inflection and single syllable shy of IN-VALID which is quite easily recognized as synonymous with NOT-VALID, and hence a pretty shite way of describing someone who transiently mobilizes with a frame? How are you not outraged?? 

If only I had tinier ears. 

how he became señor valentine

I met Ian this August in the doctor's mess (for those non-Brits, “the mess” is the appropriately dubbed equivalent of the on-call room which basically means a trashed area of the hospital where junior doctors can sleep at random hours, eat their food, and generally talk bollocks about the shit day they’ve been having. It resembles a fraternity the morning after a party - crumbs and excretion stains on the sofas, rumpled up sheets, a flipped over lamp (that has literally been on its side for two and half months), food wrappers thrown amok, curtains that don't actually open, a paper bag of stale donuts that someone will eventually eat, a free (!) vending machine that delivers watered down coffees and hot chocolate, and a big-screen television that displays a continuous feed of news articles about Brexit or Trump or accusations of some new American film producer/ British parliament member having been lascivious in the workplace). Anyway, I was in this mess place with some colleagues having lunch when I spotted Ian sitting there alone looking generally unenthusiastic and otherwise doing fuck all. He was just staring blankly into space with his arms folded. So I said HI. He did not seem much impressed by my exotic accent nor perky attitude. So I pulled up a chair and badgered him with questions in effort to make him cave to my charm in any capacity I could.

Nothing. This guy was impenetrable.

He tells me now that he had been having a particularly bad day between work and some rando girl he met on the internet having dumped him out of the blue after their second date. It doesn't really matter anyway, in that moment I failed every attempt to entertain him  and eventually surrendered, leaving him on that sofa statically depraved, just the way I’d found him, much like this:

Ian is the personification of my favorite emoticon innit: 😑

I decided this boy was probably a miserable loser and then really didn't think of him again. I didn't even think of him again when we apparently had a twenty minute convo at a bar party organized by the mess committee a few weeks later, one that I cannot recall. This was surprising to me as according to Ian it was a funny and interesting discourse about North Korea which happens  to be one of my very favorite topics! Whatever. I was barely even drunk. I call it payback for him having sloughed me off earlier that month. 

THEN. Then in late October I was referred to review a patient on the general medical ward where he (unbeknownst to me) worked. I walked into the ward and started talking with a colleague about the patient, when Ian suddenly emerged from an isolation room fully gowned in head to toe infection control yellow plastic. Like, a proper polycarbon trashbag dress with long sleeves and blue gloves. The way he looked at me in that moment was unforgettable- some wild mix of tender meets predatory. It was confusing but arousing and completely disarmed me. British people are in my experience terrible at making eye contact, let alone letting their gaze linger. But this particular lad was strategic, and after capturing my attention, asked his colleague to kindly fetch him a cannula, conveniently leaving the two of us alone separated only by empty and awkward space. He asked what my plans were for the weekend and then called me to task by requesting I write the date on his cannulation sticker. My pen wasn’t working and I definitely didn’t know the date. So he grabbed at the air for any other random cheap topic that could protract our conversation. He was flirtatious. Brave but wholesome. And then our time was up.

That evening I got a message from Ian via Facebook saying "it was lovely to see you on the ward today". Whenever I tell British people this story they invariably ask "WOT? Is he even  ACTUALLY British?" Apparently this is far too forward an advance for a bearer of the union jack over his heart- had he been true blue he'd have orchestrated his next move when he was drunk in the pub, saying something stupid or mildly perverted , hoping i too was drunk enough not to notice, or at least drunk enough to ignore it, and then we’d snog, and then maybe shag, and then after that perhaps he’d have asked me out for a cocktail weeks later. But this boy was different. He waited no time to ask me to join him at Shakespeare’s Globe theater for an evening of the arts.  

…but that never happened.

We got to talking about an imminent castle fireworks display in his hometown and decided instead to go with the risk and romance of having a first date as a weekend away together at Kenilworth Castle to see the Guy Fawkes Day celebration. It was unconventional and risky which I liked because either way I’d have a story to tell over brunch with my budding group of girlfriends. I got used to fishing for stories having dated half of London via various dating apps for the first six months of my time in the UK. At some point it began to appear as if I were hunting natural dating disasters. 

The build up was exciting and intense, we talked regularly on the phone and engaged often in random acts of romance .. I brought him a chocolate croissant to the ward one morning, he left a coffee in my department the morning after. I brought him home-made dinner to the ward on one of his long days, he brought me flowers and a card the following afternoon. We also got together for a cheeky 15 minute coffee date at work, just days after we had  bumped into each other in the pub when I was dressed as a yellowjacket for Halloween and he drunkenly whispered to me that I was the most beautiful bee he’d ever seen. Intoxicated, stupid, and slightly perverted indeed. But he ran out before the snog.

Our high stakes weekend finally arrived.  We took Friday off and left early in the morning, embarking on our 3 hour roadtrip out of London. In the first half an hour I almost lost my shit when a hairy brown spider dangled down from the windowsill over my left ear. Then I almost lost my shit again when we had not even made it as far as Chelsea before Ian shamelessly started singing along to some teenage pop garbage tune on the radio.

We stopped first at Stratford Upon Avon to see the home where Shakespeare allegedly grew up. It was all remarkably cheesy and hardly historical (placated by the bag of lemon sherbets I bought myself). But then Ian kissed my face for the first time in a tiny alcove of Shakespeare's garden. And I felt all those butterflies. And later in the day when we arrived at our AirBnb, there were two bottles of champagne in the room- one that I had organized to surprise Ian, and a second that Ian had organized to surprise me. He won because he also ordered flowers and chocolate. I mean...

And then there was Kenilworth. It was one of the dreamiest days of my life. Drama in the sky. A full moon rise. A castle in decay. And a good English boy. 

  

And of course, the intensity of a three day first date getaway would not have been complete without having met Ian's family. So on day three of date one I received formal and incredibly warm introductions to mom, gran, aunt, cousin, godson, niece, and in -laws. And when they asked us how long we’d been together, we smiled and said “well, we met in August”.

  

one foot in front of the other

Do you ever oscillate between manic productivity and then days where you barely manage to do more than change the batteries in your vibrator? 

Neither do I. Because I am never lazy. At all. Like, ever. Nor do I own a vibrator that is battery operated. Double A's are so 1989 and not even environmentally friendly.   

Basically I have been quiet not because I'm lazy but because I changed jobs a few months ago and have been trembling at a frequency too rapid to effectively type as I focus all energies toward trying not to fuck up my life or someone else's. 

I thought I was doing ok in this respect until yesterday I tripped over the bathtub and probably broke my toe. I knew immediately the damage was going to be bad so I rapidly washed my important bits, grabbed a pack of peas from the freezer and plopped down on the bed with my right leg raised, not initially realizing that the pea pack was open to one corner and consequently dumped half the bag's contents all over my duvet, which then split between smashing into the white sheets and rolling down into the cracks of the bedframe as I jumped up to try and contain them. Mission aborted, the morning therein dedicated to hunting for rogue vegetable matter rather than nursing my limb.  I hobbled to work. At the end of the day I unwrapped my (very cute designer) shoes to reveal this beaut: 

Reminds me of the last time I walked straight into the wall whilst sober, which is  basically unforgivable for someone who identifies with being an adult, not that I claim access to this exclusive cohort. Double annoying that my gel pedicure from two days had also chipped off in one full piece from my pinky toe, unrelated to the injury but adding insult in any case. 

Tis the season where after a period unwavering myopic focus trying to survive (in a way that interrupts sleep), that herpetic gift that keeps on giving reappeared in my  right nostril, impeding my ability to breathe from one of my only three air holes, painfully crusting up my nares, and outfitting me with a massive and painful retroauricular lymph node just for the sake of reminding me that I have one. A retroauricular lymph node and herpes. Forever! But this is old news.  Just try typing "herpes" into the search bar of this blog and at least 7 hits will come up that all pertain to me. 

But otherwise, living in London is great! Tonight I am going to see the Ferryman in the West End. Theater and live music and art are regular parts of my life here and I'm grateful for that. I am also grateful to be able to afford ramen and kebabs, toilet paper, the massive electricity bill, that monumentally priced public transportation, and have a roof over my head. I am still in that same crap apartment which now has an industrial sized trash bin in the kitchen, which from its nascency has had a broken spring in the lid and therefore has to be kept closed by a lime green broken salt and pepper shaker. It's impressive how your muscle memory develops in response to these sorts of things. For instance, I know that to  simply toss away my used tea bag I have to reach out, remove the salt and pepper weight from the bin lid, physically lift the lid, THEN pick out my teabag from the mug THAT I HAVE LEFT ON THE COUNTER while I hold the lid open with my other hand.  It sounds easy but if you're standing over the bin with the mug in your right hand and the teabag in your left hand, you need an extra hand to take the salt/pepper shaker off. You have to plan ahead to throw your shit away in my house! It is good that I love to formulate lists and plan things. I have gotten used to this routine to the degree that when I'm in the presence of a normally functioning bin I get all disoriented the way you do when you usually drive a manual transmission vehicle and then switch to automatic. Your feet start tapping the ground like an overeager dancer with metal plates on their soles and sometimes you hit the gas like you would a stiff clutch and things go from copacetic to scary real quick. 

I have noticed some things about British people. Or maybe it's just Londoners I don't know. But I can't sort out why so many people in these parts go for runs with a backpack on. Can somebody please explain this to me? I have never seen a phenomenon quite like it. They are definitely not running contextually for something like the bus. I know because they have all their sporty gear on.  What exactly is in that backpack they all have? Its not thin like a camelback that supplies hands-free water. Its humped like a ninja turtle, full of unknown goods! I wonder, what could be in there, as well as where they are running from, or to?  I have also noticed that while I am admittedly charmed by the british accent, as a wretched stereotype, they are famous for being snobby when it comes to matters of proper etiquette, grammar, and lexicon. But then you pour some lager into their face holes and they start shouting obscenities, jumping out of the queue, and unabashedly peeing in public places. The city has even installed  outdoor, open public urinals in places like Soho. Basically just a wall where people can pee against so at least the act appears intentional and well conceived. Oh! and then when they speak they all almost invariably say things like "samwich" instead of sandwich, and "free" instead of three and "everyfing" instead of everything. I just don't know what to do about this heuristic break. I came here to become more like the Queen and instead am just finding it more and more acceptable to eat a Burger King on the underground after a night out on the lash. 

Thats enough for now, Im late for a 5pm gin and tonic in Picadilly and likely a tiny cucumber samwich. Had I planned ahead and not been temporarily equipped with a degenerate toe I'd stay a little longer and run there with my backpack. Maybe then I will start calling myself a Londoner. 


BYE

good as gold

The week began as follows:

9:00 AM- START WORK

9:01 AM- OBSERVE FULL LENGTH LOWER LIMB RUN IN PANTYHOSE 

10:42 AM - HOSPITAL BADGE AND KEY CARD FALL INTO URINE FILLED PUBLIC TOILET. FISH BOTH OUT. WASH HANDS.

12:47- GET REPRIMANDED BY CAFETERIA LADY FOR CROSS CONTAMINATING CUCUMBER SPOON WITH TOMATO AND OLIVE SPOON

12:57 - DISCOVER SHORT BLACK CURLY HAIR ON FINAL BITE OF CAFETERIA SALAD


My last post did not go over well. I was chided by friends and family for making careless decisions, mother going so far as to deposit twenty times the cost of a bike helmet into my account on the condition that I buy and wear a bike helmet.  I am poor and also happen to be absolutely terrified of her so...

HI MOM.

Things are going pretty well apart from the hair that has been stuck in the back of my throat since Monday. It has done my head in to the degree that I can't tell anymore whether it's actually there or just a psychological response to having found a pube in my lunch earlier this week.

I have ventured on a multidisciplinary approach to get my bad attitude in check. I started a mindfulness meditation course which appears to be taking effect quite fast. After session one I came back to find my laptop bathing in the contents of a spilled water bottle. It doesn't work anymore. The day after my iphone went skating across the hospital, rendering my voice in future conversation akin to "speaking from the inside of a packet of potato crisps". social demands obligated me to buy two new electronic devices on the same day.  but in spite of spending a months salary and consequently having eaten beans on toast for the last three meals, I remain remarkably calm, a controlled reaction I attribute to having spent two hours touching, observing, tasting, and LISTENING to a raisin. Yes. I was obliged to listen to a raisin as part of my meditation course. And you know what? It worked better than xanax. you should try it. 

I also started seeing a therapist. he is cute and my age and that is definitely weird, although he wears a gold necklace which renders him unattractive enough to be objective according to me. On session 1 I ugly cried for an hour. He recommended I download an app called Breathing Zone. I have followed his advice and paid the 3.99 to hire a robot lady to tell me to "breath in, breath out" according to the number of breaths/minute i exhort her to exhort me to take.

I have also started reading for the second time The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It's zen buddhism marketed into a cute westernized package. My kind of self help, particularly given my penchant for expletives:

“Giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. The key to a good life is 

not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, 

giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.” 

This kind of spirited text along with such activities as listening to raisins has really helped me chill out lately.  

I have been spending time with my cousin Matthew. I managed to convince him to come live with me. He lets me boss him around, frequently succumbing to my demands that he stop his studying and watch louis c.k./eat ben and jerry's/meditate with me. We have realized that we share not only a last name but some mild psychological disorders including OCD. OCD is characterized by obsessive thoughts mitigated by compulsive behaviors that are rationally unrelated. For instance, when I was a kid I used to resolve my obsessive thought that I might become suddenly orphaned by tapping on the sofa a specific number of times. I never told anyone. Last week Matthew was eating hobnobs while we were watching a film. He ate one then appeared unsettled, looked at me, fidgeted a bit, looked back at the package, then reached for another cookie and said:  

"I have to eat everything in even numbers."

and what happens if you don't?  I asked.

"someone might die."   

Safe to say we are bonding quite quickly.

Morgan my belgian bestie was in town this weekend. He kindly commented that my flat isn't as shit as he'd expected, although pointed out that my floors are "bouncy" (they are) and my landlord is "really chill but missing a lot of teeth." We demolished london a la Mr and Ms. Pac-man. I think every one of our photos together has a fork in it. Always nice to have friends around. 

And with that, I am finally starting to feel settled in my new habitat, even managed to find a new prized mani pedi salon which is a luxury I enjoy second to an oversized bowl of lucky charms. (the only thing is that they use a cheese grater to remove my calluses which I find terribly strange, but I suppose adaptability is a gift for your synapses). So there she is, north London from the view of my favorite spot on earth, pot of gold tucked somewhere into those side streets not too far down the horizon.