Warning: lengthy maudlin post ahead!  PMS and choc withdrawals have CLEARLY caused self-pitying behaviour…shameful stuff

There is always plenty of guilt wallowing in the Hopeless Household.  It is probably the result of being hopeless; the knowledge that when it comes to the small stuff, I am practically incapable of getting it right and always have been.  I seldom think through the consequences of my actions and am often in dreamland when performing a mundane task; examples include failing to switch the oven from grill to bake on a number of occasions (and wondering why the cake resembled fudge pudding, or why the chicken took three hours to roast but had exceptionally crispy skin), applying sunscreen to every part of my body except the back of my legs before sunbathing on my front, trapping fingers in the back of a horsefloat only to rip open the wound weeks later by trapping them in a boat hatch, popping a champagne cork into my cheekbone (first bottle of the night, FYI), constant bruises on hips and thighs because of a failure to judge exactly how close I am to a tabletop, desk, chair etc when walking...you've probably got the picture.  When my family call me hopeless or variations on the same theme ('Lemon', 'Useless', 'Dill', dopey behaviour in another referred to as 'Pulling an A'),  it's often done with affectionate as well as mocking tone - I think!  Sometimes the name calling is accompanied by a resigned sigh if I've been 'specially incapable.  But even though I am consciously aware of this character flaw, it doesn't seem to change my behaviour.  Hence, guilt.

But the guilt is much more multifaceted than that.  My most constant source of guilt at the moment is my work.  I'm not going to get specific about what I do, suffice to say I've had a change of direction in my career recently that feels like a mistake and I'm failing to give my all or best to the job as a result.  I hate being mediocre but it seems that the inability to 'win' at this job leads to a failure to care as much as I should, which leads to guilt which cycles back around.  And the guilt/scared feeling about the next performance review/future is terrifying, compounding the problem. 

The guilt also includes family/friend guilt.  I am hopeless at corresponding (in large part due to laziness and an aversion to phone chat, god only knows why but I've always hated making phone calls and vividly recall being unable to go rollerskating at about age 8 because I was too scared to call the rink to ask the session times).  So I feel guilty about neglected relationships all the time.  Still, it doesn't shift me from my inertia.  More guilt.  Guilt that this is a shittystupid problem to have when it has such an easy answer!

Money guilt.  I'm now earning a fairly solid wage yet failing to save it/spend it responsibly.  P thinks I'm a bit of a tightwad, 'specially when it comes to his spending, which, fair enough I probably am.  BUT the man knows how to spend!  He has spent the last three days online looking at speakers and amps and announced this morning that we were going to buy copious amounts of wine to curb his spendlust brought on by sound equipment he knows I don't want him to buy (that shit is expensive AND ugly!)).  However, the advent of online shopping in my life since moving from the third world has been like a transfusion of spendahol via internetty waves or tubes or however it is transmitted….

Body/image/drinking guilt, known generally as LACKING SELF-CONTROL GUILT.  Let's shelve that for another day shall we, I'm pretty sure there's a tragicomic contemporary novel in there somewhere….fuck, I fancy myself the Kiwi Jonathan Franzen, don't I?  I'm about 90% certain that I'm an effing genius waiting for recognition but when or if I ever did put pen to paper it'd probably be the worst sort of chick lit (yeah, I have read chick lit and I recognise it has a place, BUT.  You know). 

Guilt about not feeling guilty!  This one has to be a lady-spesh, amirite?  You know, where you're feeling all mopey and self-guilt-centric and then begin to feel guilty that your guilt isn't about the big issues like domestic violence and the abuse of children, or the plight of those in need etc etc…not to say that the big issues don't concern me (they do, and I often feel guilty for not being charitable with my time when I'm someone with a particular skill-set who could assist the vulnerable in some small way), but to say that I often feel guilty for not feeling guilty enough!  Could someone please hand me a hair shirt and a knotted cat'o'nine tails?  This is turning into a self-flagellation session the extent of which Dan Brown has not yet even dreamed!

This is where I should segue into discussion of some Worthy-with-a-Capital-W resolutions for the New Year but eff that, I'm not that self-reflexive.  In large part, I already know the answers to my wee guiltstravaganza, so I'm going to head out, buy some champagne with P and toast the New Year and the infinite possibilities for change it brings. 

And snapping out of the pityparty for a moment, here's to you and yours this December 31!   Whether your problems are bigger or smaller than mine, I drink to you and impart these words of wisdom: always ensure there is at least one person more drunk than you in the room!

in which I am a bitch at christmas. alternative title: no sugar for you, my dear

There is a new house rule instituted by P after Christmas: A shall not be fed copious quantities of sugar in any of its forms at family functions.  I became a scrabble psycho: "well that WOULD be a word if you could spell it correctly" and "how about you lay your tiles this side of next Christmas" (said this little piggy to P's elder brother).  I'm hoping you also think that board games are inventions deliberately aimed at creating family disharmony through competitive behaviour.  P thinks it was the fact I was crashing badly having earlier ingested a bottle of champagne and a block of choc (that's how I roll, literally AND figuratively).

THIS WAS HOW THE GAME STARTED.  THIS WAS NOT HOWEVER HOW THE GAME ENDED. 

NOTE ALSO: P'S HAND.  DOESN'T HE HAVE ATTRACTIVE HANDS?  AREN'T THEY ALWAYS POSITIONED RIGHT BY A DRINK?

I maintain however that there was more to it than eating enough sugar/fats to induce type 2 diabetes and playing a boardgame of which I SHOULD BE QUEEN.  Enforced familial time for a period of days in cold weather and a small apartment does not Miss Congeniality make.  I found myself unable to resist narky comments and while I could feel them coming on (like a sneeze, they build up quickly and explode all over someone else's face unless you trap them with a hand.  Net result is the same face from fam members that you would get for a sneeze on the tube/subway) it was like I lacked all self control.  Scrap that, I do lack all self control (see: choc ingestion earlier referenced).  But I have decided to put myself on a deliberate niceness campaign to the family for 2012.  That's right, the guilt isn't worth it.  Besides which, these are the only people who pretty much have to bear my company on holidays for the rest of my life, so I better start playing nice.  Internets, you're going to bear the brunt of it, I suspect...get prepared for a bitchfestoramaextravangza every time a pineapple lump passes these lips!

pretty knickers

I'm a klassy lady, no doubt about it.  I have just opened a package at my desk at work and THANK GOD the office was empty because I hauled out the most enormous flesh coloured expanse of lycra known to mankind.  That's right, I am hauling this ass into shapeliness by confining it within the bounds of a spanxtravagnza on the wedding day and P going to be BEYOND THRILLED.  I can confidently predict wedding night will go much like this:

1. Getmarriedsignlicenceblahblahblah DRINK CHAMPAGNE.  LOTS OF CHAMPAGNE! 
2. Follow that up with forget to eat anything/decide it's clearly a good idea not to eat anything because holy hell I do not want to look bloated in that mothereffing dress. Besides, logic dictates not eating will leave more room for champagne.
3. Begin dancing.  Only with champagne in hand.  Cannot do it without: look like epileptic spider when dancing sans glass in hand, look extremely hotttttt and skinny with glass. 
4. Get assistance to pee from girls by promising more champagne, try my damnedest not to pee on the dress while they haul the elasticated monstrosities down my legs in order to lever me onto the loo (those girls are good to me.  They just have to ask and I too will wrestle the spanxmonster to allow them to pee and I'll damn well compliment their vajazzle at the same time even if glittervaghearts are not my thing).
5. Tell my parents I love them.  And my family.  And my friends. Then tell P's family that I love them too, even the ones I've not met.  But also tell them that eff me, their last name is just ABYSMAL and they should count themselve lucky I'm taking it even though it is against all my feminazi principles and it was just because P looked like he might cry when I told him I'd been thinking about keeping mine.
6. Fall over on dance floor while trying my patented bend over backwards dance move which is like sexy crack to the gentlemen.  *Ahem*
7. Find P (no doubt having hugs and backslaps with his boys "chaps, you know my motto is bros before hos" and, no doubt, "just because I married her doesn't mean I love you chaps less").
8. Leave wedding venue for B&B in cab. 
9. Try to avoid cab vom.  Distinct possibility of pulling over at some point en route.
10. Arrive at B&B, kick out friend who hid in the front (no way am I having suggestions of a little A sandwich or spoon-sesh on my wedding night)
11. Stumble into bedroom where P will have stashed a little somethingsomething along the lines of hideously expensive champagne which we will open, be unable to taste because our mouths have eau-de-vino/"just a wee dram of whiskey to celebrate" already.
12. P will help me with the buttons over my bum on the back of the dress et, voila! discover the SEXIEST UNDERWEAR KNOWN TO MANKIND as popularised by Renee Zellweger in one of the greatest movies of our time
13.  P will wonder, for approximately the 999,999th time in the 10 or so years he's known me, what happened to the image of delicate, feminine futurewife he envisaged before he met me
14.  While P takes time for his wee internal monologue, I will pass out.

And that my friends, is how spanx will, in all likelihood, ruin wedding night amorousness for me.  It will be the spanx' fault.  FOR SURE.


(oh god I just google imaged ugly spanx for a pic to accompany this post and I'm pretty sure it's gonna get me fired. eff, eff eff.....for the love of god, DO NOT make that mistake!)

WHO SAYS THAT ROMANCE IS DEAD?

Sushi bar, lunchtime.  Pile of teriyaki chicken steaming before ridiculously hot girl A wearing effortlessly stylish and chic lawerly attire.  (My blog, my rules people: I will reinterpret facts as and when necessary.  though I will admit that I considered retiring this SUPER (in)EXPENSIVE THEREFORE KLASSY Next dress last time I wore it on the basis that the lining is holy)

A: [answers phone, looking longingly at pile of soy-based treats]
P: Hello. 
A: Are you telepathic?
P: What?
A: Telepathic? Are you this thing? How do you always know to call exactly when my lunch is hottest and most appetizing?
P: I'm thinking of your waistline.  Anyway, I'm in Oxford Street and it's all kinds of godawful and I'm about to punch someone.  Did you get my Christmas present yet?
A: Part of it.  Why? [said knowingly]
P: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, I went to La Senza and they don't have your size, what can I say, you're chest blessed, butanywaydon'tgettherestofmypresentlet'snotbotherthisyear.
A: So, you got nothing right?
P: Nothing but love. 


[in the interests of full disclosure, he is generally very good with presents and I do love to have ammunition in the ongoing battle of who's the boss so not all is lost.  HOWEVER.  hymph.]

admission

Some time ago, I met P.  Despite looking like an electrocuted elf thanks to an ill-advised haircut (word to the wise, if you have thick hair that consumes any and all humidity then a short bob is not the style for you), P was obv dazzled by my sparkling personality (or boobs) and was v pleased to pash me in a student pub after a very large number of beers on both our parts (I know, young A was completely hopeless and had not realised that her fresher 5 (or 10) kgs and poor life choices were attributable to beer.  Older-wiser A recognises this fact so choses to mix her beers with vodka sodas because THAT will obv help with getting a case of the skinnies).  Soundtrack: Xtina's "Dirrrty".  Lighting: dark (if I'd seen the shiny polyester shirt which may or may not have had a dragon on it some different choices may have been made). Some years later, P screws up his courage to take advice from Beyonce and put a ring on it....SO....

I'm getting married in February.  To P. 

I would like to think that it's not an OMIGOSHWEDDINGSTRAVAGANZA scenario, but I'm beginning to think it has started making me act like an asshole. 

Case in point: I spend time reading wedding blogs.  LOOKATALLTHEPRETTY. I suspect this makes me a HUGE wedding-asshole but this specialpartypalaver has opened up a whole new world for me.    I know, I know - the expense, the obssessive need for DIY and 'craft', the alternate-brides who are all so hung up on bunting and mason jars and fake moustaches on sticks and the preppy-brides who are all so hung up on monogrammed effing napkins = sheer godawfulness.  it's like an insidious creep: the more you look, the more you see a detail or two that you think would be lovely on your special day, the more that thought becomes 'well it's practically necessary' on your special day, until you cycle back into why the eff I am calling it 'our special day' because VOM. 

JUST SAY NO TO CRAFTS

This is not to say all wedding blogs are bad, au contraire interwebs. But they make me do things like agonize over the 30 metres of yellow gingham bunting that might just make a lovely backdrop for the super super wedding vows I am writing (so far they're effing lyrical: "I, A, take you P" thatisall) and that, my friends, qualifies me as an asshole. 

YOU GUYS

i had exactly enough cash for a diet coke. 

let's try this again, shall we?

a