Well here we all are again, on the internet, reading things I've written. Or am currently writing. What a goggle. What a goggle, INDEED.
Despite the rumours (perpetrated by myself by the statement of raw facts in previous entries) I am not returning to university at the end of this month. Why? Because that precious -2% off of a 1.1 in my degree has cost me. COST ME BIG TIME. I have not been granted any academic funding. Yes, that's right. I have been REJECTED. Because of this REJECTION, my life has been thrown into WILD CHAOS. My future is positively now a potential cacophony of hilariously disastrous events. So we shall just have to see, dear faithful readers, what will unfold. Will it be a napkin? Will it be a bedsheet? Will it be a tshirt? Or will it be some form of "career"? Only time, that old chatterbox, will tell.
My original plan, to return to university in 2006, is being reverted to, only now I am open to being perverted from that course in life. I am considering, in a lazy way, taking some time to be "creative" and whatnot. I am asking myself WHO AM I? and WHAT DO I REALLY WANT? and WHERE AM I GOING?
The answers are usually
Sometimes though, I ponder on writing, properly writing, or getting into radio (those little boxes are more resilient than they look!), or being some form of "counsellor" who advises induhviduals on life improvements. Unhappy? neuro-praxis suggests: PRETEND TO BE SOMEONE ELSE. Angry? neuro-praxis suggests: CUT YOURSELF. Depressed? neuro-praxis suggests: DRINK THOSE BLUES AWAY!
In one week I will have been married a year. How absolutely and completely ridiculous. Sure I'm only a child, for goodness' sake. The year has flown by, and we have melded into adults with salaries and a whole house to ourselves, and a car, and hobbies, and it's all been a blur. And yet I still ponder on quiet Sunday nights about what I want to be when I grow up. K is still as fabulous as ever, tottering about aimlessly in his bunny slippers, waving his shotgun at the neighbours. I tell you cynical anti-marriage types something: you do not know how very good and fun it is to do this marriage thing. It is an agreeable place to be. I would like to recommend this CRUMBLING SOCIAL INSTITUTION to one and all. Yes, I may get a bit bored when I'm forty seven and still polishing his shotgun, but hotdamn, it's sweet round at the praxis/tard household. I recommend you all select a suitably willing companion and have a sip of this cup. How bad can it really be, hanging out with your favourite person til you croak it? Or til you grind up a wineglass and put it in his morning coffee?
I'm done for now. There is more in me but it's too late and we haven't had any dinner, because we're just MAD like that. Ask anyone. I'm off to make toasted sandwiches and sing along to my Aimee Mann cd. I might also play my drums because the neighbours are on holiday and I got a pair of nifty wire brushes today, which are both SHIPSHAPE and SPANKING. And a bit TIP-TOP.
neuro-praxis -- We Feel Our Best When We're Looking Down
Yesterday was one of the worst days I've ever had in my life in a job. Nothing to do with my job, rather more to do with a bullying young twenty-something woman who came in and verbally abused me for twenty five minutes. I coped for about fifteen of those twenty five minutes, then I became cutting and eventually asked her to leave. The whole experience was traumatic and when she had gone I felt deeply upset and as though I had sunk to her level, or at least taken a step towards her. Today I am left with the residual bad feelings...that kind of knot that comes with deeply unfair and unproductive conflict. It's one of those times when you've got to ask yourself where your sense of self-worth lies. Oh dear. Let's hope I feel better by Monday. By then she will be making a complaint about me to my boss. That's ok, though, I like my boss. She's a reasonable person.
I sort of stumbled out of work and decided to go to the supermarket. I find supermarkets calming and therapeutic. Perhaps it's how clean and tidy they are. Perhaps it's how comforting they are...with all of those provisions just waiting to make my life more convenient. I did a full shop, taking my time, sort of pathetically hoping I would run into a friend, which is so unlike me. It wasn't that I wanted to moan about my day, rather that I wanted to see a face that wasn't hostile. Instead, I saw something rather more surreal.
I had my trolley packed and ready to go when K called. I sat down to take the call on a seat across from an empty checkout. As I was bemoaning my sorrows, a girl of about twelve sat down at the checkout with a bottle of wine, a jar of peanut butter and a box of teabags. Presumably her life was too busy for her to queue and she had decided to take care of matters herself. She persistently pushed buttons and scanned things, but nothing really happened. She resorted to pulling streams of paper out of the receipt dispenser. Eventually a nervous and incompetent member of staff said, "Pet, you're not supposed to be here." Without a word, she literally skipped off the seat and went to her mother, who was two aisles down.
I feel the need to say
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE BEHAVIOUR OF CHILDREN?! WILL THERE BE CHILDREN IN DAMN GOVERNMENT NEXT? WHY ARE PARENTS AFRAID TO SAY NO? WHY DO CHILDREN RULE HOUSEHOLDS AND PARENTS ACT LIKE ARSETARDS? WHY IS MY BLOOD PRESSURE SO HIGH? AND DO I HAVE TIME FOR A SHOWER BEFORE I GO OUT THIS MORNING?
NEURO-PRAXIS -- ALL THESE QUESTIONS AND MORE
So I'm standing under the Eason's clock on O'Connell Street, soaking up the evening sunshine after work, waiting for a date with my brother. In the distance I notice a foppish sort of fellow heading my way. About 5' 8", late fifties, scrawny, slightly staggering on his tiptoes, dressed in a buttoned-up too-small suit and with a number of colourful, filthy scarves round his chicken neck. In the most Prince Charles voice I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, he said,
"I'm terribly, terribly thorry, but...I don't thuppothe you hev any thpeh change?"
I felt about in my pockets and found none, and imagining I only had a tenner in my wallet, I said, "No, I'm sorry, I haven't." Then realising that I'd gotten change to park the car earlier out of my tenner, as he began to move off I said, "Oh actually - I do!"
He stopped, and as I fished for a two euro coin, he smiled, leaned in and through brandy breath said, "I...don't get paid until...Thurthday, you thee..." With a little flourish of his hand he demonstrated how his wages had flown away. I smiled, to myself, and said sympathetically, "I know. It's hard to make your money last for the whole week."
He didn't seem to have heard me. I handed him the coin. He smiled again, turning the coin in his hand, then paused, and looking at me as intently as a camp, drunk man can, said, "I like females..." He looked away into the distance again and I stifled a chuckle. "That's nice," I said.
"You thee," he continued, turning his gaze to me again, "I'm...mathculine...and I like...the feminine...you understand?"
I said firmly, "I'm married." And even if I wasn't, I'm not usually attracted to old, drunk, filthy, homosexual beggars. "Quite," he replied slowly, looking at the sun again. He began to saunter away, waving his coin.
"Thank you ever tho much..."
neuro-praxis -- Crazy In Love
A pre-bed snippet.
K has been away, it seems to me, almost the whole summer. In reality it's probably only been half the summer but I have difficulty with counting, and also with properly conceiving reality.
But he has now returned from Edinburgh, bright eyed and bushy tailed (he's had a tail implant, God bless him) and I cooked a Japanese meal to welcome him home.
Boy, was that one rank dinner. I can still taste it a little...eugh. I DISGUST MYSELF.
Western cooking, you see, that's my bag. I know how it works. I know how when you haven't got 50grams of one ingredient, that you can replace it with another.
But not so with Japanese cooking. I do not yet have that skill. It was only when we were choking down the initial mouthfuls that I realised I wasn't serving one thing that had been made with each and every ingredient required.
With great grace and civility I swallowed down my vomit and had two pieces of toast instead. Even the toast tasted bad. I think I may jut give up eating meals altogether, and exist by sucking paper in the office and eating Opal Fruits at the bus stop.
K brought me home a fat hardback novel, Cloud Atlas, and a bar of chocolate from Scotland's most expensive chocolatier. Isn't that a great word - chocolatier ? So evocative. It's nice chocolate, but I'd rather have had the eight Galaxy bars we could have purchased for the same price. But then, I'd be common as muck, like the rest of you.
The clock says it is time to go to bed. Damn clock. Always telling me what to do! Some day I'll smash that clock, and it will be sorry it tried to hold me back. Oh yes. It will be very, very sorry.
neuro-praxis - Discovering Satellites And Naming Them All Neptune