the plight of 2021

Anyone else feeling themself walking the line of imminent dissociative fugue? No allowances for pleasure or reflection, at least not without a PCR test. just panic, survival, crisis, work, night terrors, work, hamster wheel, and feeling nostalgic about each and every one of my ex boyfriends. A year where being mindful feels uncomfortable and boring at best and looking ahead is met with the wrong kind of uncertainty, so instead I've been doing a lot of looking back. 

And as with most times I've found myself moody as well as in keeping with the world's current state of omicronion affairs, I too am presently suffering an outbreak of my own, that gift of herpes that keeps on giving in my right nostril. 'Tis the season.

Last time I was here I was considering the tactic of manifesting love. This was the GenZ inspired advice that I've since learned doesn't actually work. Will revert back to the millennial/GenX persuasion that you get it when you're not trying, because actually since manifesting, my love life has never been more shambolic! but other than failing in love and watching the pores on my face progressively expand in size to the wormhole of infinite possibility, here's what's been going on in 2020 and 2021. 

On the final night of freedom before lockdown 1.0, March 2020 when London was voraciously getting their last social pint in at the pub, I quietly picked up my dry cleaning as well as my seeing glasses which I had left in the uber a few days before. The uber driver and I met in a dark alley near the camden roundhouse on a foggy night and he handed them over to me in a plastic baggy. It was a covert assignment, like a drug deal only for Linda Farrow opticals. I then picked up two cans of beans because... ...toilet paper hoarders!!, and went to bed. I have thought a lot about doom and what this behaviour says about me on the eve of the final hurrah. I have reached the conclusion I am a highly practical introvert who may also be pathologically boring.

Bumped into the very attractive neighbour who also lives in the penthouse of my apartment building  and could have  been the perfect lockdown lover. I was taking out the trash and wearing my hair shaped like a pineapple and sweatpants with socks AND birkenstocks, which he commented on. That was the beginning and end of that. 

I'm an organized person so lumped all the dating apps into a single folder on my iphone called 'fuck my life'. I then deleted them all. Then I redownloaded them again. Then deleted them. I need rehab. 

One guy on a second date asked me if I would sign a prenup immediately after learning that my financial situation included owning two (2) shares of pfizer stock and another one (1) in beyond meat. 

During the winter I returned to hospital medicine. In my first week back to feeling very golden for saving lives during a pandemic, rode my bike to the hospital and got pulled over by a copper who slapped me with a 50 quid fine for running a pedestrian(!) red light. This was still zombie apocalypse with ZERO people or cars on the road and i was late for work asadoctorinapandemic. Must have been collections coming to grab back at my karmic debts. Imagine. Cried the whole way to work on the cyclette.

Later that week I got shit on by a bird whilst riding my bike home from the hospital.

My flatmate moved back to the countryside and so I started living alone which was great until I almost died multiple times choking on a shrimp summer roll and then a banana slathered with peanut butter. Had to throw myself over a chair. Which then threw me into existential angst about who and how long it would take for me to be found if i went out like that. Looking for a flatmate who is as skilled a lover as he is the heimlich. 

Googled and read the wikipedia page for identity crisis. Twice. 

The candelit Vivaldi Four Seasons that I watch in a church every christmas season was obviously canceled due to the 'rona but rescheduled for July in the middle of a heatwave when the sun don't set. So that was weird. 

Escaped London lockdown 2.0 by the skin of my teeth, flying to switzerland last christmas to help deliver Roki's baby. Slept in the airport overnight and woken up by a squadron of policemen wondering if I was fugitive or homeless, staring down at me and my possessions on the floor, demanding proof of identity. But all's well that ends well and whilst i spent the holidays in quarantine (but not jail!), Roks slid meals under the door, inclusive of my favorite champagne, gifted me a gorgeous leather bag (which I would later spill fish sauce into on my way to work), and graced me with the honour of welcoming her third bebé into the world. This was the highlight of 2020.  The second was being on top an empty St Moritz with my snowboard.

Caught the mouse that had been freestyling in my living room for the better part of 2020/21. Realized this when i came back from switzerland and my heater was broken. Electrician came round and pulled the sofa back...

"ughhh miss, you know you have a mousetrap back here?"

"oh yea just kick it aside"

"ok but there's a dead mouse in it and it's decomposing"

I became obsessive about cleaning my own apartment. Have you ever accidentally tipped over the toilet brush to spill poo water all over the tile? Me neither. shit. 

I became bored and lonely and so started filling my brain with garbage television like Selling Sunset which for lack of my own personal life, became so emotionally entwined with that I cried genuine tears on at least one episode. I hate myself.

Found a zucchini in my takeout burrito, confirming my longstanding evidence-based belief that england doesn't know mexican food and Deliveroo and UberEats cyclists in london are the biggest pillocks on the planet. can i get an amen. 

Got the gift of UTI for my birthday whilst on holiday in Greece which resulted in pill popping antibiotics and swirling D-Mannose martinis rather than something more pleasantly intoxicating. 

In the autumn, began receiving quotes for funeral plans in my email inbox. 

But the best bit of 2021 was finally getting to go home to California and see my loved ones, where there is so much endemic plastic surgery that when I told a man my boobs were real but the smile was fake, he asked if I'd had my lips done. 

Goodbye 2021, we had great expectations for you after 2020 but you remained firm on your pillage for good times. I'll be spending Christmas in isolation no doubt with chinese takeout and my friends and family from reality TV. Cheers to you, 2022.

reminder to not stay in your wet bikini this christmas

boyfriend material

A lot has happened in the two months since I last wrote. For starters, I am now officially closer to my forties than my twenties, appropriately timed given the newest addition to my London apartment- a twenty year old flatmate. Yep, twenty. TWO. ZERO. Are you feeling a little jealous of all that youth? All that hope, promise, and freedom from cynicism? Despite my initial reservations, she has defeated almost every conception of what I thought living with a barely legal person would be like. She is properly GenZ. Unique, independent, technology focused, and ethical (though I did notice she threw a cucumber in the trash instead of the compost today). The age disparity is less noticeable in matters of daily conversation and more in matters of operation. For instance, she is the first to reinstate the value of my independence/relationship abstinence, but when it comes to her using my old school kettle (and by "old school" I mean, the kind that heats up the water by sitting on the stove rather than plugging into the wall) she asked "How do you work this thing?".

In some ways she actually seems more prototypically adult than me. This was noticeable the other evening when she prepared her dinner of crab cakes and salad with premium FETA, while I opted for popcorn and Primitivo. We have a really nice symbiotic relationship developing, where she might admire me for belonging to a Whatsapp group called "Intellectual Girls WLTT" (an acronym for "who love their titties"), and giving zero fucks walking to the local grocery to buy a £10 mango, wearing my robe and this:  

while I admire her for being precocious, vibrant, having undetectable pores, and checking in on me to make sure I'm not stuffed in a trunk when i've been incommunicado for three days. Also as I'm sat here at the dining table typing this, i shouted out to the ether that I was craving a lemon cake, and she went ahead and baked me one. Love her. 

So ya, I turned 36 and it was actually one of the best birthdays I can remember. There was a legal break in strict social distancing at the time so I managed to have a proper party with my crew at a bar in Chelsea and then bicycle back to East London with an oversized balloon strapped to my dungarees while london honked and shouted birthday wishes at me from the windows of their cars. I also treated myself to £300 worth of dental care (dental hygiene not covered either by NHS or my private insurance <insert tasteless stereotype on british teeth>), descaled my kettle, and had a good think about my goals for the year, something I do every August. I tend to really endeavor to execute my goals once I've committed them to the page and as such they tend to be things that are challenging but mostly in my control. This year because everything is tits up and out of control anyway, I decided to add on an annual goal that taps into metaphysics or the law of attraction or whatever, that "when you visualize it you materialize it" kinda maxim. So I added "get a boyfriend, fall in love" to my list. There, I SAID IT. No more of that "when you stop looking for it, it will happen" nonsense. I am taking a different, grab life by the testicles kind of approach and going alpha female on love. Anna, my sage, twenty year old flatmate tells me this is called "manifesting". 

Then. Other things I've noticed about getting older since August: I love to spend money and hate to waste it. I spent 70 quid on some lush eye retinol, only to drop the glass jar on my tiled bathroom floor the moment I took it out of the box. So i scraped up all that anti-aging gel off the floor, including the tiny fragments of commingled glass, and put it in another container. I'd rather dab eye gel with glass shards and pubes in it onto the most delicate layer of my face than waste a full bottle of anything Dr. Dennis Gross. I invest in quality loungewear. I have almost totally outgrown Sriracha. I iron my pillowcases. I am more political. I get excited when I get handed two-for-one cocktail flyers for bars in shoreditch (love a good coupon but also chuffed to think that they don't see my aging face as an impediment to their business). I also noticed a distinct sense of pride when my esthetician told me I had much less body hair down there than most her clients, who are overwhelmingly under the age of 28. I have developed an Instagram addiction that not even The Social Dilemma could spoil and am unsure whether this is age appropriate or not but at very least confirms my evolving strict adherence to habit. I have purchased exactly ONE share of BEYOND MEAT (BYND) because I want to be an adult with assets, but that's all I could afford. I am now more inclined to think I'm bleeding internally after having an episode of black stool than remembering I had a charcoal based pizza the night before, because, deteriorating abdominal organs.  And I have unabashedly picked my nose in a digital work meeting thinking my zoom camera was turned off because, deteriorating cranial organs.

In other events over the last two months, I completed my ballot for the Presidential Election which with Kanye West front and center looked more like a meme than  a political undertaking. But perhaps the most troubling event of late was losing my beloved grandmother, my mother's mother. A deliciously warm and positive woman with the most moving, generous spirit. I will save those real things earnest for the grottos of my heart, but her final piece of advice to me was serendipitously in accordance with one of my own line items: stop waiting so long to have babies. 

all that glitters ain't gold

Every year on my birthday I reflect on the year gone and the year to come to formulate a list of short term goals. August is my birthday month and indeed with the turn of the calendar I've been frantically working to tie up the ends of last year's goals, as well as begun thinking about what I'll put on my new to-do list. 

I'll be 36 this year and while living with rodents and a twenty year old girl was not what I'd have envisaged for my life plan at this age, there are decisive clues that indeed my life in its current state is an age appropriate one. One such example is evidenced by my amazon shopping history:

• book on how to get over your narcissistic/sociopathic/psychopathic ex, CHECK
• gigantic supply of detergent that makes your whites whiter, CHECK
• tea lights, CHECK
• swiffer refills, CHECK

On that last point, I really have no idea where all the dust in my bedroom is coming from. I feel like my life is just a circadian rhythm of dusting. Does anyone else feel this way? Anyone out there who can advise on how to stop it? I don't have pets or uncontrollable dandruff.

In addition to these amazon purchases, other age appropriate purchases of the last month which support my age include £120 on CBD oil to help with the anxiety/insomnia, a green velvet and gold sofa that is to die for, and an iron console table. weeee! these are the things that excite me. 

Less age appropriate expenditures were:

• an external keyboard (because remember I spilled a double margarita on my laptop and the apple store quoted me minimum £500 to fix it, so i settled with a magic keyboard (mom can you plzzz give me money to buy a new computer thx))
• trip to italy (because shouldn't i be more financially and socially responsible?)

This is what traveling during the age of COVID looks like:

(but also, this)

Other ways I know I'm imminently 36:

• I DM'd Kim Kardashian to congratulate her on the statement she put out about  Kanye/mental health for having been well written and compassionate and overall socially well conceived 
• I am waking up in the night with reflux despite my CBD oil 
• I choked on a shrimp summer roll when I was home alone but managed to avoid death by giving myself the Heimlich (actually now that I've put this in writing I think perhaps it fits better in the column of being age inappropriate?)
• I have a cupboard solely dedicated to tupperware 
• On a skype call with my 95 year old grandmother I asked what life advice she'd give a 35 year old and she said "all that glitters ain't gold, oh, and don't wait any longer to have a family"

Happy birthday to all my golden, leonine loves out there. 

Dick pic

For me it was the most peculiar Independence Day, observed from a metaphorical lawn chair parked on pejorative British soil, dramatized by the fact that the UK and EU are at present disinterested in hosting Americans within their territories. Not only this but the Fourth of July also happened to be the same day that restaurants, pubs, and hair salons reopened in London. Freedom reigned in Britain while  it narrowed in America. I was sent a meme: 

"Under Kennedy we went to the moon, under Trump we can't even go to Europe." 

I traded hotdogs, for goat cheese stuffed mushrooms and salmon from nordic waters, fireworks for candles, and shitty beer for a bottle of champagne. And yes I am feeling smug. Smug and grateful to live in a country where there is health coverage for all and the man in power listens to his scientific advisors, and people don't revolt against face coverings as a political statement. I did kinda miss the hotdogs though. 

But it isn't all NHS style glamour on this side of the pond. The rodent has started showing up more and more despite pest control setting up traps and filling in structural gaps. Ratatouille even shows up in the daytime now and barely flinches when I screech. He marches into the kitchen like he owns the place, like "bitch, mind your business, imma just get this cheese outta the fridge. You want?" The pest control dude has been here three times in the last month, to the point even he has lost insight into his professional boundaries with me. 

Here is the progression of our texts:

"Good afternoon, contacting you from Pest Control. I have ordered the required stock for the proofing to be carried out. I'm aiming to attend this Friday providing it arrives. Would this be convenient?"

Yes that's fine. 

"Have to ask, that map in your front room I was looking at the other day, where did you get it? I really want it"

[No answer.]

2 hours later... 

"Would it be wrong to ask how old you are?"

Definitely not appropriate but I'm closer to my forties than twenties.

"Did you think I'm in my 20's then btw?"

I didn't think about it!

"Oh haha well I might be younger then you but I'm closer to turning 40 then I am to turning 20 myself."

Well that's reassuring. (Thinking to myself "you spelled 'then' wrong.") 

"I'm glad to be of help. But I'm sure your not that much older then me. When I first met ya I thought you were about my age maybe younger to be honest"

"You* not ya"

Okkkkkaaaaayyyyyyyy.

So anyhoo, I have evidently been traumatized from having been forced into cohabitation with Ratatouille that anytime there is something on the floor like a sock, scrunchie, or birkenstock, an adrenaline bomb goes off in my body. I swear I'm going to have a fucking heart attack one of these days and my flatmate will come home to Ratatouille standing over my dead body, snorting all my Stilton.  This is one reason I really need a boyfriend, or a cat. It's a sliding doors kind of moment in a woman's life.

My flatmate Anna sadly decided to move out (and in with her quarantine lover!) which would have been a perfect opportunity for my boyfriend to move in. Only problem is no boyfriend. So I put an advertisement up a couple weeks ago on spareroom.com. I sent Anna the link and asked her to send me a test message to ensure it was working properly. After a few minutes nothing came in. So I asked her to send me another one, which came through immediately.

Me: Anna, I got the "testing testing". Did you send me anything else?  

She replied with this screenshot:

Me: Oh, I didn't get the dick pic.

Anna: What, that's crazy.

Me: Yea I guess they censored it.

Anna: Yea but i wrote "dick pic", i didn't send you an actual dick pic. 

Not seeing the non dick pic dick pic was the most action I had all winter and spring. It still hasn't come through. 

My area is gold and the flat is so cute, under normal circumstances I'd have been spoiled for choice of potential paying residents. Only this time, presumably given the extremely uncertain covid driven circumstances, I had only four people respond to the advert. 

The first was a boy who wrote immediately saying how nice the flat was and asked enthusiastically if he could come see it, but then ghosted me when I actually replied. SHOCKER! A man who ghosted as soon as a woman showed interest. Gents, if you are ghosting people in any capacity you are a cliche! Girls talk a lot of shit about people like you. My emphatic life advice to you and your friends would be to aim for some originality by actually responding, even if to say you're not interested. This will take you far in life. 

The second was a girl roughly my age who worked in post production for TV. She was absolutely adorable and fun and I knew in an instant we were highly compatible. Only she couldn't afford it due to temporary covid related cuts to her salary. So I offered to subsidize her rent until she got her usual cash flow back. Sadly she was too conscious to accept. She was so good I wanted to pay her to move in. And pay her to be my friend. 

The third was another seemingly chic and edgy girl with a nose ring who worked as a curator for a London art gallery. She was my age and could afford it. But she came with a cat which meant she came with a litter box and I just couldn't bring myself to do cat poo or  cat hair, even with the Ratatouille situation. I have this hangup where hair or fur that's left the body really makes me queasy. 

The fourth was a girl who was working full time and also doing a diploma course in something to do with numbers/cash and ensured me she would be quiet and sensible. She was perky and eager to please, with long blonde hair and heels. Potential for real danger: she was 20 years old and showed up at the viewing with her MOTHER, wearing not only a blazer in desert heat but also a mask and rubber gloves, and stayed this way for the full two hours (TWO HOURS!) they were in my house, even after I had told them I had already been diseased in March. I felt like the hazmat situation might have been symbolic of  her  having lived a very sheltered life, one that would result in her judging me for doing normal human things like pooping or shooting whipped cream directly into my mouth from the can. But as my current flatmate Anna reminded me, "she'll be good for the rent money and maybe her mum will even buy you a Lamborghini". So, I went for it. Stay posted for updates on that after August 1st. 

Other than this, not much else going on where the new highlight of my day is checking the mail. The sense of joy that floods my soul every day I saunter down to the post box is akin to Christmas morning. Only problem is that the disappointment I feel when there is not even a junk letter is excruciating and unbearable. There is really nothing going on. Things got a little exciting for a minute when I noticed a new cafe had opened up downstairs, though my momentary interest was  thwarted when I asked if they did matcha lattes and the barista responded that "they did mocha lattes". Like, I appreciate they both start with the letter "M", but they're really not the same. 

Welp, it's time to go refresh the news and my weather app for the 293903495034985th time today...

(And happy fourth to my cronies on the other side.) 

Slumrat millionaire

I hit a new low this week doing nothing short of shitting the bed yesterday. 

It all started on Tuesday afternoon when I ordered a raw kale salad from a swanky health food restaurant in central london. I paid fifteen quid ($18.50) for a bowl of inedible plant which someone had apparently taken an undetectable dump on because it resulted in me being roused at 5am wednesday with a nausea so overwhelming it made me tachypneic. Moments later i was running to the bog and heaving out loads of cruciferous chunks (seemingly much more than the equivalent I'd eaten), followed by exorcist level green diarrhea, then more heaving, more diarrhea, and this continued for about four hours until my body composition emulated a cactus. Have you ever been sick like that? To the point where the thought of water makes you retch but your mouth feels like you'd spent a lifetime eating talc for breakfast?

anyway..

actually no, i'm going to rant on this topic some more. I mean, where is the reward for trying to be healthy? i am never eating that toxic green plant ever again. Why would i punish myself when I can eat pizza, burgers, and pasta and feel on top of the world? 24 hours later and I feel like i've been punched multiple times in the epigastrium. Oh and a little public service announcement: Pepto Bismol turns your poo black. I learned this the hard way thinking I had melena and was dying of internal hemorrhage, only to read the label and find out that bubble gum bismuth has this unfortunate side effect. 

I swear I live in the most expensive slum on the planet. East London is described as "edgy" which I guess is the adjective used to embody those times you walk out the door of your complex and are greeted by a large soft serving of human excrement. Two weeks ago I was chilling in my living room when a rodent suddenly appeared in the kitchen. No matter how many times I clean the dust reappears faster than it does in black rock city. The streetside intercom video doesn't work at all and the audio is intermittent which means we indiscriminately buzz anyone up who rings, notwithstanding the person who left the poo on our back doorstep. Our shower has two temperatures: scalding hot or freezing cold. But London is just so, ahhhh. We love it and love to hate it. Here is a picture of pest control making everything right in the world:

The purchase of nobility kale was a one off really. For the most part I have taken this period of quarantine to do things for myself. This includes meals as well as self care- mani pedis, and most recently waxing my own lady parts. I had had enough of the situation so bought a professional grade hot waxing kit and went berserk. Managed to remove all the hair  by myself! along with all the underlying skin to which it was once attached. 

I was a little surprised this weekend when I got an email saying that there was a package waiting for me at my office across town. I always find these scenarios when I have a delivery but didn't order anything very exciting. What could it be? Chocolates and flowers from a secret admirer? So I biked 40 minutes across town, conspiring along the way how I might possibly fit a gigantic bouquet of peonies or orchids in my bicycle basket. When I arrived, I was handed a square of plastic wrap smaller than my hand (and my hands while shaped like a man, are actually quite tiny). I opened it up. It was a roll-on of mosquito repellant. Was this some kind of sick joke? The celestial bodies above laughing at me for the trip to Thailand that got cancelled only days before the whole world shut down?

There have admittedly been some nice moments during this lockdown. I am actually a bit of an environmentalist so its pretty cool to see carbon emissions down by 60% in London and swans swimming in the same canal where I would otherwise expect floating syringes. I feel like I notice more  of these kinds of beautiful things- the smell of jasmine, the beautiful bearded and bunned man drawing a heart with red chalk on the sidewalk. These are stark comparisons to the other darker moments where I've found myself sitting alone at the river typing 'will I ever get married?' into the online magic eight ball.  The answer is always some variant of "my sources say no". The closest I've ever gotten to a 'yes' is "concentrate and ask again". In fact I just asked it again right now and it says "Very doubtful"

I guess that takes the discomfort in uncertainty out of some things. What it does not do is take the uncertainty out of whether or not I will ever dance in a sweaty, packed nightclub ever again, or if my laptop keyboard will ever revert to normal. You see, a few weeks ago I spilled a double margarita on it and probably got some flour in there too as I was making home made tortillas. The internal fan started blowing like hell and I was sure my computer was going to blow up in a spectacular show of living room fireworks. I was relieved when it persevered, only now the keys are so sticky that the computer is good only for watching The Real Housewives of New York. I am hoping if I throw some talc or olive oil in there they'll loosen up. For now I am using an external keyboard.

This has been the best, shittiest, longest, fastest year ever. I have realized that what makes me feel almost as bad as kale is taking care of myself. I am so bored with taking care of me. I would like very much instead to look after someone, or have someone look after me, but being independent brings a limited joy. Of course we can do things for ourselves, but isn't it so much nicer if someone does it for us? 

So who is volunteering to skill up and do my next bikini wax?