wrong side of the bed

I had a serious case of rage yesterday.  Here are some of the assorted items that triggered my ire, trivial as they may seem:

• The ironing board.  It was all in my living room, up in my face.
• P asking if I was going to continue with ironing his shirts.  While my hands were plunged in a sinkful of dirty dishes.
• Dishes.
• P's thumb, preventing him from doing dishes.
• P's thumb, making him moan about ironing his shirts.
• P asking for help with his buttons.
• P's shoes, on the floor.  EXISTING.
• P insisting he could use his suitcase if he wanted to, contrary to my wishes.
• P's face.
• P.
• The television remote controls. PLURAL.
• Eating crap food.
• Running out of breath mints.
• People in the lift inconsiderately getting out at floors that weren't mine.
• People in the lift with halitosis.
• People on the street dawdling.
• People.
• The window decorations at Smith + Caugheys (annoying songs + dopey, creepy puppets)
• Picking P up from getting his wound redressed.
• Traffic.
• Parking.
• Getting attitude from P about how far away I parked.
• My pizza getting cold.
• OH FUCK IT BASICALLY EVERYTHING.

I can see now how *rational* I was.  Nothing like the Christmas spirit, aye? 

a+e

P lost a chunk of his thumb this weekend, thanks to injudicious use of a mandolin (instrument of the kitchen variety, as opposed to a stringed instrument, though that would also have been a sight to see - I feel confident gouts of blood don't often come of a serenade).  I wasn't there when the injury was sustained, for which I think we're all grateful,* but I was the one who hauled his mangled carcass to the A&E yesterday. 

Can we just sing a round of Hallelujah for a Christmas miracle?  There was not one other person aside from medical staff in the entire emergency clinic.  Unbelievable.  The only delay in obtaining speedy and efficient treatment was me filling out P's form and narrating it back to him (it's his right thumb).  P was not so keen on my description of how the injury occurred - I wanted to write: 'Potatoes Dauphinoise and a Sharp Thing - Need I Say More?' but my suggestion made him all huffy.  We went with: 'preparing dinner', which I think you'll agree is terribly boring. 

P was seen quickly and I stayed put in the waiting room, reading my fill of mimi smartypants (terrible choice for a medical centre, given mimi kept making me snicker.)**  I could vaguely hear P talking to the nurses though and asking for a spot to lie down when they took off the dressing, poor love. At one point, a nurse appeared and asked whether I was the girlfriend.  This made me a bit huffy, as she asked with a spot of incredulity.  I composed myself, trying to believe that P's babyface probably had more to do with it that me looking like a decrepit cradlesnatcher or an uncaring witch who deserts her one-and-only, and replied in the affirmative, resisting the bizarre temptation to wave my left hand and cry 'wife, actually'.

He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening prone on the couch with the thumb elevated, as removing the original dressing had caused further bleeding.  I think it was quite sore too.  However, because I'm awful I kept veering between laughter (he looks so funny, giving the entire world a bulky thumbs up) and edging away from him (because ew, I missed you while you were gone but I cannot handle that thing touching my body).  What a magnificent nurse I'd make. I think I've really missed my calling. 

*I am NOT. GOOD. in an emergency.  Think faint, freak out-y.  I'm not proud of this, but at least I'm honest with myself.  Oh god, I'm feeling vaguely squirmy and nauseous just thinking about it.

**Given my emergency response-mode, I couldn't deal with seeing the injury in the flesh, as it were.  Poor P was therefore deprived of the soothing balm of my company in the emergency room.  I'm sure he desperately missed having my hand to hold.

o christmas tree

TRALALALALALA let us pretend I didn't just angsty word-vomit all over my blog, shall we?

Let's focus on my happy homemaker project of the week instead!

CHRISTMAS TREE.  My house will smell like Christmas this year or bust!
First, reminiscence of Xmas trees past (because what is a post from A without a self indulgent diversion into her FASCINATING personal history)

1986: I produce my first tree decorations, including a paper chain that got me into serious trouble at kindy when I tried to teach the other kids how to use the scissors in order to make them. 

1987: Milk carton Santa Claus produced.  I made my mother sit him at the bottom of the tree EVERY year thereafter until well into my 20s when he mysteriously 'vanished'.  I still ask about whether he's turned up again.  Mum dodges the reply. 

1988: Ugly wax crayon angels made at school with my sister.

1989-1995: Fight over whose ugly wax crayon angel got to top the tree that year (and, incidentally, whose was whose).  Constant fights between Mum and Dad over leaving the tree lights on all night (i.e. woman who likes twinkling versus man who cannot leave a room without turning off all switches).

1996: The Giant Tree that we could decorate only half way up.  The top of it looked very, very lonely.

Late Nineties: Who knows?  I clearly could have cared less, while wrapped up in teenage angst.

2000: I work in the Farmer's Christmas Store AFTER CHRISTMAS and swear off any decorating ever again EVER IN MY LIFE while listening to the same 7 jazzed up carols on a loop over 13 hour shifts, perpetually hungover. 

2003: Bangkok's answer to a Christmas Tree: an enormous recycled bottle tree.

2006-2008: Are you kidding me?  Like we're going to get a tree into this 46m2 apartment crammed full of our crap.

2009: I decorate a standing lamp as a Christmas tree using tinsel in New York, as we are too broke for a tree.

2010: We live with P's brother, who goes nuts over the tree and buys expensive decorations at the Cologne Christmas markets.  We purchase one measly decoration for ourselves, and it has sat in a box ever since. 

2011: We work our faces off and never see the inside of our flat anyway, so why bother?

2012: See 2006-2008.  Where the fuck would we put it?

2013: WE WILL HAVE A TREE GODDAMMIT IF IT KILLS ME.

I am determined to enjoy the lead up to Christmas this year.  We have struck no presents deals with just about every relative in creation, so I needn't panic even over getting pressies under the tree - I'm just going to have a tree and sniff it regularly, for my hit of Xmas spirit.  Along with an actual hit of Xmas spirits because you don't think I'm missing out on opportunities for those, do you?  Last year's Xmas drink of the year was the negroni, what shall we do this year?  I'm thinking something whiskey based.  This is a bizarre tradition concocted as adults with my parents, who one year decided margarita slushies were the way of the future at Christmas time.   

the elephant in my room

I have been studiously avoiding writing about what's on my mind.  Partly, the avoidance stems from the lack of cohesion in my thinking on the topic, though, when has that ever stopped me before?  Partly, its because at least one or two of you who check in here know me in real life and this is not something I've discussed with anyone but P.  Not my mum, not Fat Harry the cat from next door.  I don't intend to discuss it with anyone else, either, so please please please, let it lie where it falls and don't say anything.  Partly, it's also because it is a tough, personal, emotional topic to write about, particularly when people you know are struggling to get or stay pregnant. 

Yep, it's the one where I process my feelings on children.  Mine, specifically.  I've been burning to put it in words and now that I write I've given licence to the thoughts to lick into flame, sucking up the oxygen in the room. 

Here are the facts pertaining to me, children and pregnancy, as I know them:

I am 31.  I am not a spring chicken, but neither am I over the hill.  I am in a stable relationship.  I have a home with space.  We are not pressed financially (aside from this week when rates, mortgage, water bills, you name it I paid it and I cursed the god of outgoings copiously).  I have always believed my future involved children. 

I like achieving [but oh fuck me I cannot find a way to talk about ambition that leaves me comfortable that I haven't fried my chicken in my career space].  Fundamentally, I don't know how compatible my job is with parenthood.  Excuse me, how compatible it is with motherhood because god knows having a baby doesn't seem to affect the careers of many men, does it? 

I am good at entertaining babies.  I like to sniff and squeeze them.  Toddlers leave me pretty cold.  They want so much of you.  I don't really know any other children of other ages. 

I love my husband: desperately, calmly, furiously, wholly, every which way.  I want my children to have him as a father.  I watch him with our nephews and godchildren and something inside me squeezes very, very tight.  Yet I love our relationship as it is: lazy days, busy days, uninterrupted time for one another on the weekend.  Travel with him.  Restaurants with him.

Lots of my friends are having babies.  Birth announcements pop up on Facebook as regularly as birthday wishes, it seems.  I was shown non-alcoholic beer in the pantry this weekend, and I squealed with delight.  If it sticks, she said, it's only four weeks.  Friends have suffered because of pregnancy: loss thereof, lack thereof. 

We are warned: your life will change so much.  Enjoy it now, or don't do it at all.  No one speaks about how children have enriched their lives, really.  I want to know why they love it so much, despite the aching and the groaning and the hollow envy they express at my life (having all that time to yourself! they say.  And I feel a stab of unworthiness at being a double income, no kid person, not the smug sense of self satisfaction that is intimated by the childbearer.  And then I feel a pang of irritation: like you fucking know how I spend my hours.)  But wouldn't seeing our children grow, loving someone like my mother loves me - wouldn't that be worth it? 

I want to experience pregnancy.  But I don't want to hate my body more than I do now. 

I will be the only child in my immediate family to have children.  That's pressure.  Yet there's no pressure coming from my immediate family, other than that bald fact.  My mother and father intimated recently that they daren't ask us about kids, but have not expressed a preference either way.  Watching my mother and father with children induces that same internal squeeze, seizing my organs and constricting my breathing.

Biology. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Those are my facts.  'Facts', I say, hiding feelings of inner squeeze and angst and desire and concern behind language that seeks to make it all a scientific calculation. 

I'm not, by the by. Conception has not occured, immaculate or filthy or happy or terrifying or otherwise.   I haven't thrown birth control to the wind to see where the breeze or my uterus takes us. 

What if I can't?

What if I can?

in which i am sweaty and hairy

So, this weekend was amazing weatherwise (26 degrees! and higher! in Auckland in November!) and you will be pleased to know, no doubt, that I came away sunburn-free.  I may not be able to keep resolutions relating to the consumption of crap from the Daily Mail (though I must say, my consumption has dropped considerably since resolving that it's a misogynistic piece of shit tabloid rag) but I am two weeks down with no sunburn.  That, my dear readers, counts as a success.

Yes, awesome weather.  Not so awesome?  Pushing the mower at 11.45am on Saturday, sweating up a righteous storm, then realising I'm due at the hairdresser by noon.  I changed my t-shirt but continued to sweat profusely in the car en route (despite windows down + arms raised to encourage the flow of air) and then again in the chair.  Poor old M, my hairdresser, must have been revolted.  However, he managed to keep a straight face and didn't even punish me too much with the hairdryer, which was kind of him.  I had to run straight to a bbq following the hair cut...I may have been vaguely, um, glowing, but at least I had good hair, right?

(Well, I've had it cut to what I believe is known as clavicle length in bloggy circles. So hot right now.  However, because I'm cursed blessed with a great deal of hair, M added some 'long layers'.  I'm not convinced I don't look like Rachel circa '98...which, you know, is a mixed blessing because I would have LOVED that haircut at the time.  Not so sure about it all these years later.  I am definitely a member of the generation for which everything in life is referable to Friends.)

There are three Mondays left, after today, until the Christmas holidays.  I am unbelievably stoked about that fact.  I am absolutely desperate for a proper break.  Not that I deserve it, per se, but I want it very, very much.  Cannot wait.  Having all that about undeserving and desperation, I'm taking next Friday off too for a jaunt to Sydney.  Watch out Australia, I want to be in you.  NAOW.  I am going to have one of those terribly cliched weekend city breaks in which one takes in basically none of the cultural life but trashes their credit card and eats/drinks/drops etc.  We have a few friends in Sydney, so there'll be a spot of visiting and hopefully some beach time too.  Ha, poor Sydney, looking at this pasty bum!

So.  That's te karere for today.  Fin.

the lead up to xmas begins

Remember the time I wore a white dress to a charity ball and nearly bled all over it?  Well folks, it's that time of year again! Not the inappropriate bleeding, but the charity ball part.  Which? UGH. 

I go to these things as P's +1, ostensibly to make sparkling conversation.  It's not obligatory but it's a nice thing to do to support P and his career and his workplace's desire to contribute to a worthy charity. 

Charitable giving is good.  I approve of charitable giving.  Over the past year, I have sipped wine from the glasses I purchased in the blind auction at last year's ball with a smug glow.  P has taken the signed, framed Kiwis' Rugby League jersey to work, so I never have to look at it again (honestly.  Let's just take a moment to let that sink in.  He purchased sporting memorabilia and let me pick it up as a 'surprise'.  I utterly abhor all sporting memorabilia - that ugly, ugly sponsor's shirt from some car racing thingo has only escaped my matches by virtue of being pit-lane-inflammable, the motherfucker.  Oh, and the All Blacks jersey because torching that would lead to divorce, not to mention revocation of my citizenship.  AND P KNOWS THIS HATRED.  He thought it was hilarious.  It wasn't.  It was pushing my buttons for the sake of it and I just about throttled him.  I certainly unleashed my patented Look of Disdain and Contempt.  Whoa, digression + a rant, you lucky things.)

Aaaaanyway, despite my approval of charitable giving and my appreciation for one of last year's charitable purchases, I still don't fancy going tonight.  (a) I still don't approve of the excessive spending that goes into these charity ball things, (b) I don't fancy making small talk just now, and (c) I think I'll look fat in my lovely Juliette Hogan dress.  It's not the dress's fault, it's mine.  Vanity and social insecurities, just wonderful.  I'm really pushing myself for improvement, hey? 

JULIETTE HOGAN.  SEE? NOT THE DRESS'S FAULT.  I AM WEARING IT WITH MORE SLIP AND MORE PUDGE.

it's not so bad

I had a lovely weekend with my family, thanks.  No drama, just sunshine and laughter and chasing cows and pink wine and homemade bread and flights that were on time, thank goodness.  Weekends like that make me wish that everyone could enjoy a relationship with their immediate family that is as fundamentally happy as mine.  Don't get me wrong; we have/had our moments, but I love them very much and they're very, very good to me.

I thought I ought to write that down, in the spirit of avoiding this blog's usual fodder, the commemoration of bad.  Another Damn Life wrote about the 'perpetually escalating competition to prove who among us is the biggest disaster'.  I read that and cringed, physically backing off the monitor.  Yes, the name of this blog is Hopeless.  Yes, I record for my own (& others?) amusement the dopey goings-on at Chez A.  It's not about competing though, I promise.  I'm quite proud of my own adulthood, really.  This blog does contain allusions to my overall contendedness in the grand scheme of things.  However, it is devoted in the main to recording silly minutiae.  No one reads my archives more than me (no one really reads my blog, which is fine with me.  I don't go out of my way to advertise it; no comments really on the blogs of others, no facebook or twitter 'new post up nows!')  I write this for me.  For the need to memorialise. It so happens that I record something that makes me feel close to my family, who have been teasing me for years about that very thing - being impractical. 

In all honesty, I find that writing about the good is hard.  Writing about the bad is cathartic - whether the bad be silly or terrible.  I shake screeds of words about the bad out of my keyboard, but I find the good is usually stuck in there, with the crumbs and moulted eyelashes.  My Kiwi sense of cultural cringe - that anything I say about the good will be seen as a terrible boast, qualified six ways from Sunday or no - heavily edits anything I wish to say about the good. 

All of that is by way of justification, but also in saying I that I agree with Another Damn Life.  We shouldn't compete amongst ourselves to find the biggest klutz/cereal-for-dinner-eater/etc.  That smacks of laying claim to an 'adorable & endearing trait' that writers try to give humanity to their thinly-veiled idealistic female characters (oh you know you could name about a zillion examples from rom-coms, chick lit and young adult fiction.  Not to say those characters don't fulfill a need, certainly).  Anyway, I really like what Lyn had to say about it.

Now, regarding the comment Lyn made in an earlier post about borrowing Amalah-style OMG CAPS LOCK writing...guilty as charged.  Hah. I really need to find my own style and niche, which will no doubt involve tonnes more ill-judged parenthesis and dashes and semi-colons.  I enjoy that, clearly.

So, yes.  Today I stumbled across a blog that hit all of my insecurity buttons in a manner I admire.  And things are generally pretty good, here.

(I found Lyn through Kirsty of A Safe Mooring, whose writing I also very much enjoy.  I am indebted to them both.)