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?

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”.