Gah. It’s been one of those days. One of those days where it rains non-freaking-stop, and you really don’t want to go out, but you have to renew your road tax, and you’ve been putting it off for days but now you’re going to get arrested if you don’t do it, like right now, so you hunt down your umbrella and you roll up your jeans and you trudge over to the Ghetto Post Office, only to find that, whoops, the GPO is actually just a pretend post office and they don’t issue tax discs, so you put in your contact lenses and you drive to the main post office, but when you get there you realise that you left the five dozen bits of paper you need to claim said tax disc at home, so you turn round and drive back, and then you drive to the post office again, and then you wait for twenty minutes in a queue behind a mad woman, and then you buy wine and go home, the end.
Also: you write really, really long run-on sentences because GOD, today sucks. Doesn’t today just suck?
I blame the DVLA. They brought in this fancy-pants new system whereby you can now renew your tax disc online, see. Now, this made me happy. Very, very happy. I hate Post Offices. Hate them with the hatred of fiery hate. I hate them because a) they’re always filled with old people (WHY?) b) there’s always at least a twenty-minute queue, and c)they’re always filled with old people.
The one exception to this is the Not-The-Ghetto-Post-Office (located next to the Ghetto Superstore in the, er, ghetto across the way), which is always as quiet as the crypt, possibly because of its "Not Actually a Post Office, Just Pretending" status, which I discovered to my chagrin today. The post office I eventually ended up in wasn’t actually filled with old people either, for a change, but it was filled with a mad woman, who seemed to know every.single.person. in the room (except me, natch), and spent the entire ten minutes it took her to do her thing telling them all, in a very loud voice, about her job washing the bodies of dead people. I swear I’m not making this up.
Anyway, I couldn’t use the online payments thing for reasons too boring to go into here, hence my trip to the post office(s), so that was how I spent my day. You wish you were me, you really do. In other news, I think I might hate my new glasses. I don’t actually pick them up until tomorrow, but every time I think about them now I think "granny glasses". Thanks, Terry. I’m preparing for the miracle of sight by planning a huge, top-to-bottom house cleaning, which will take place tonight, just before Big Brother. Weirdly, I’m actually quite looking forward to it. Cleaning is therapeutic. I am teh mad.
Hey look, I managed to write a whole entire entry about the post office and renewing my tax disc! This is interesting to you, Internet, don’t even try to tell me it’s not.
I got paid today. Spent it. Yes, all of it. Oops.
See, I needed new glasses. Actually, I’ve needed new glasses for about three years now, ever since Rubin ate the old (expensive, Chanel) pair and left their mangled corpse on the living room rug, but I haven’t bothered to do anything about it because: a) I have contact lenses b) but no money and c) I don’t like myself in glasses anyway, which is unfortunate really, because I’m almost totally blind without them.
I’ve been hating myself in glasses since I was given my first pair at the age of 10. They were brown and ugly and I was beside myself with excitement about them, mostly because my friend Jenny had glasses and I wanted to be like Jenny. Jenny had flat feet too. I couldn’t have those, but I did persuade my parents to buy me a pair of hideous, double-buckle shoes which I’m pretty sure were designed to help correct the flat feet, but I didn’t care because they were exactly the same as the ones Jenny had. They were brown and ugly, too, and as soon as I got them I realised that actually? I didn’t want them anymore. This was to become the theme for my young life. Hey, I wonder what happened to Jenny?
Anyway, we picked up the new glasses, and I skipped gleefully home, absolutely full of myself, and imagining that everyone was looking at my glasses enviously and totally wishing they were me. They weren’t. This much became clear as soon as I skipped into the kitchen and glanced at myself in the mirror before recoiling in horror and running screaming to the bathroom, where I plastered my face with talcum powder (I was too young to own makeup. Doh), which I refused to remove until my dad threatened to ground me.
You see, I hadn’t realised quite how many freckles I had. Or how unkempt my hair was. I had known that my eyebrows met in the middle, like a bridge, but I hadn’t known quite how similar to Liam Gallagher this made me look. In fact, until I got my first pair of glasses, I had been but slenderly acquainted with my own appearance. No one had realised quite how bad my eyesight was – probably because it just hadn’t occurred to me to tell anyone – so when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was a vague, pale shape with a lot of red hair around it This was acceptable to me. The "warts and all" reality was not.
Years passed. I developed an expensive makeup-buying habit, bought contact lenses, and learned never to look in the mirror while I was wearing them. To this day I will wait until the last possible second before inserting my lenses. All of the beauty magazines tell you how important it is to put the lenses in before applying makeup. Hee! Because yes, I will totally want to see myself without my makeup on, especially when I can see myself really clearly.
These days I’ve come to realise that some things just look better in soft focus. Like my face, for example, and my house. Last week? On (MO)T-Day? I was forced to wear my contacts in order to drive the car to the garage, and because I knew I’d have to drive it back again, I couldn’t take them out when I got home. I spent almost the entire time between dropping the car off and picking it up cleaning like a woman possessed. Who knew the floors were so filthy? Or that there were hand prints on the upstairs windows? (HOW?) Not me. Uh-uh. I’d been rolling along in blissful ignorance of these facts, and when I finally seen the light, it totally blinded me.
I mention all of this because it’s the only way I can emphasize just how much I resent having to spend all – ALL – of my disposable income on new glasses this month. I mean, it’s like a tax on the blind. And I know it was necessary. You shouldn’t really wear contacts for fifteen hours per day (which is the approximate amount of time I spend staring at a computer screen), and I’m pretty sure that all of the squinting I’ve been doing is the cause of the WRINKLES I found under my eyes last week, because it CANNOT be my age, and I will not even consider the possibility that it is.
So. New glasses. I got Playboy glasses, because I’m so hip it hurts. They have little diamante things at the sides (I am drawn to sparkly things), which Terry says makes them look like granny glasses, and I think they might be these ones, but also, maybe not: 
I get them on Saturday, and as I spent more than the third world debt, I also get a free pair of ugly-ass prescription sunglasses, so yay! And I spent all of my disposable income for the month. Two pairs of glasses and one large bottle of Benefit foundation. Not making that mistake again, that’s for damn sure…
So, yeah, I’m still alive, only not really because it’s all workworkwork at the moment and there’s really not much time for “being alive” when there’s so much work to be got through, is there? Actually, I’m so lazy busy that this update, on the subject of Things I’ve Done Since I Last Updated, is going to be written in a handy list format. Sorry. Here it is:
- Worked. Well, duh.
- Rode my bike without falling off. I’ve only done this once, though, so it could have been a fluke. Don’t all congratulate me at once.
- Learned how to bend it like Beckham with the football Terry bought with some of his birthday money. He taught me how to “spin” the ball and how to kick it up high, and now we will be like a catalogue family, who go to the park on Sunday mornings to kick a ball around with the dog, and then come home and eat croissants while drinking freshly brewed coffee and reading the papers. Yay!
- Contacted some wedding photographers to get quotes, and then totally failed to follow up on said quotes.
- Seriously considered becoming a wedding photographer, because GOD. £1700 for one day’s work. And you get to look at all the different wedding dresses.
- Waved goodbye to Terry’s mum, Keith and Maria, who are all off to Greece today. Felt sad, and also: jealous. Hate the part of the summer when everyone else goes off on holiday and I stay here, hate it.
- Went to the library and got trashy novels. Thought about how my novel would be much better than these trashy pieces of trashy-ness, but, whoops, didn’t actually bother to get on with writing the thing, or even to open the file in which it lives
- Ate a lot of crisps. WHY?
- Thought a lot about how my main ambition in life is to laze around reading books all the time, and also traveling. Wondered if this is, in fact, a really embarrassing ambition to have? Thought about writing a blog post about this but didn’t actually bother, so please just imagine what I might have written, and comment on it accordingly.
- Noticed that I seem to have forgotten how to write properly. When I look back at things I’ve written, I keep finding all of these really stupid, glaring mistakes, that seriously make me want to horsewhip myself. WHY? Why am I doing this? Am I losing it?
- Had three – count them – THREE migraines, all in one day.
- Did I mention I ate quite a lot of crisps?
I think that’s pretty much it. I also thought a lot about this amazing opportunity I might have to do regular copywriting for this company who contacted me, but it kind of all depends on them liking me, and that hardly ever happens with me and people, so I’m actually pretty freaked out about it. If it did work out (and God knows, I’ve been trying not to even let myself think that it even might), it would mean that I would have both significantly more money with which to buy shoes AND significantly more time in which to lie around lazing books. Gulp. But I’m not going to even think about it, so lalalalala. Now I’m going to watch Big Brother and eat apple pie. Talk amongst yourselves…
I went running today. I had thought that all I needed to become one of those people who’s, like, really into running, and also really skinny and fit, was a shiny new iPod Shuffle, but nope, turns out that what I also needed was a new green hoodie. Once I had that, there was no stopping me. Well, there was, but at least I had a new green hoodie…
(Aside: Something tells me I may also need some new black running shoes before I’ll be able to start taking this really seriously, because, honestly: the sight of my bright white feet flashing in and out of my peripheral vision? It offends me, people. And confirms that there really is no situation in which white sneakers are appropriate footwear. No, not even for running. But I digress)
As I reached the end of our driveway, all kitted out in my NGH, offensive white trainers, iPod and – whisper it – black wrap around shades (SO?! I have very sensitive eyes, OK? And the normal sunglasses, they fall off my face), I noticed the Woman Who’s Always Walking Around the Street in Her Dressing Gown hovering at the end of the driveway with her baby. Slightly embarrassed by my "Lookit me, I am a RUNNER! Who goes RUNNING!" appearance, and determined to prove that I really was dressed like this for a reason, I broke into my usual shuffling jog as I approached her.
Everything was fine right up until the moment I drew level with TWWAWATSIHDG. Then both of my ankles – both of my ankles, people – suddenly gave way simultaneously. For no reason.
I didn’t actually fall. Well, I mean I did actually fall, but I didn’t quite hit the ground. Instead I did a stupid, drunken kind of staggering move, a little like a newborn colt trying to get to its feet, and struggled on. I did not look back – but I could feel her amusement burning into my back.
I am SO not cut out for this exercise thing. I would try and exercise in the house, where it’s harder to embarrass myself, but last week? When Terry and I were playing with the inflatable punch bag that’s there for that very purpose? I managed to punch myself in the face. In. The. Face. And the next day? When Terry tried to high five me? My hand rebounded off his, and I smacked myself in the face again. GOD.
I should probably forget about the running, you know. I should concentrate on small victories: things like getting out of bed in the morning, or getting dressed without breaking my arm. Maybe then I can build up gradually to bigger achievements, like being able to run to the end of the driveway without falling over.
P.S. Rubin is all better today. I’m going to try taking him for a walk later. Wish me luck…
Tags: running , exercise , ipod
As well as being the six month anniversary of the transplant, my dad’s birthday, father’s day, and MOT day, last week was also the week of Terry’s 28th birthday.
As part of the general birthday celebrations, we also had a “surprise” visit from John, who wanted to be reunited with both his brother and his other kidney for a few days. When I say “surprise” here, I mean “We totally knew he was coming because Terry’s mum told us, and Terry picked him up at the airport and everything”, but it was good to see him, anyway.
Not so good for John, though, unfortunately. He got food poisoning of some kind on his first night back home (we think), and spent most of the rest of his stay shivering uncontrollably by the fire, whilst feeling sick to his stomach. Which was, you know, not so good.
Anyway, I mention this because for most of today, Rubin has been acting exactly like John did, with the shivering and the laying around, and the generally looking as sick as a dog. (Clearly Rubin actually is a dog, of course, but you know what I mean). The shivering only lasted for a few minutes when he was forced to go outside, and he’s eating OK and begging for food as normal, but I’m still freaking out here because OMG MY BABY! I am so letting him sleep in our room tonight. I predict a riot when Terry finds out about that, but y’know, MY BABY.
We booked him into the kennels yesterday, for the weekend of the wedding. I’m sure this is his way of getting his own back…
*Yes, we will be buying Terry new jeans with his birthday money.
** Damn, my face is shiny. GOD.
I’ve been a bad, bad girl. Not only did I sleep way later than I should have done this morning, when I finally did get out of bed, I ate ice cream for breakfast. McDonald’s ice cream. So bad.
After the initial bout of “OMG it’s WHAT time already?!” induced anxiety, though, I arrived at a very wonderful conclusion: it doesn’t matter. And it really doesn’t. (Well, OK, the McDonald’s ice cream matters. To my thighs in particular). Last week’s two-day slowdown has been replaced with the usual business, but there are no pressing deadlines, no time-sensitive projects to be done in a hurry – nothing, in short, that can’t just as easily be done tonight, this lunchtime, or at 11.45am tomorrow.
And this is why I love working from home.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve been asked twice how on earth I put up with it. The question always surprises me, probably because I spent so long dreaming of being in a position to work from home that it came to feel like the holy grail of work to me. The fact that that other people don’t feel the same – that other people, in fact, actively choose to drive to some stuffy office every morning and remain there all day, able to leave only when someone else tells them they’re free to go, never fails to surprise me. It always makes me want to counter the inevitable “why on earth would you want to work from home?” with a “why wouldn’t I?”
I mean, what’s not to like? Who doesn’t love freedom? Who wouldn’t want the freedom to get up when they want, take breaks when they want, surf the Internet when they want, eat ice cream when they want..? It boggles my mind that people actively choose the slavery of the modern workplace over that. It’s like those people who go around saying, “Oh, if I won the lottery I wouldn’t give up work. I’d get bored!” Eh? What’s that about? Are there not enough books in the world for these people? Not enough places to visit, new things to see? Mind. Boggled.
I just can’t for the life of me imagine lying on a tropical beach, or wandering through a Moroccan bazaar, or gazing upon the Pyramids or Ayres Rock, or the sales rack at Nordstrom, and thinking, “God, I wish I was in a call centre right now.” I just don’t get it.
But then, everyone’s different, of course. What surprises me most, though, is when people pick up on aspects of working from home that are almost exactly the same as working from an office, and identify them as the things they just could. not. stand. For example, two of the people who recently questioned me about my working life said that it must be just awful being stuck in the house all day. Well, pretty much the same as being stuck in an office or a shop all day, really. The only difference is that I can get up and walk out of my house any time I damn well, please. I can play music in my house, or have the TV on in the background. My dog lies beside me when I work. If it’s sunny, I go for a walk. If I was in an office I’d be just as stuck in the same place as I am here: I’d just have less chance of escaping.
If I ever had to go back to working in an office, I’m pretty sure it would kill me.: in fact, it really almost did. I’m just not cut out for the petty rules and annoyances of the office. I can’t stand being micromanaged, watched like a hawk at all times, or forced to sit in endless meetings in stuffy offices on summer days. I’m so happy that’s not my life any more.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for breakfast…
Tagged working from home
You may not realise it, but June 15th is a special day, people. Spechul. For one, it is my dad’s birthday, so yay, Happy Birthday, dad! For two, it’s the day my car goes in for its annual MOT, and I get to spend several hours totally crapping myself as I wait to find out just what the damage will be this time. It’s also the day that I bought gold shoes I really can’t afford but hey, we don’t talk about that…
In addition to all of this, however, June 15 also marks the 6 month anniversary of T-Day: the day Terry’s brother John gave him the kidney we now call “JK” (John’s Kidney. Clever, no? You can tell I’m not a writer for nothing!) and normal life – or as close to normal as you ever get when you’re The Girl Who Fell Off Her Bike Twice in 30 seconds – resumed.
Wow.
Six months. Who woulda thunk it? Six months ago today I was sitting in the reception area of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, staring at the scuffed bit on the toe of my boot, and thinking that this moment – this horrible, horrible moment – would never end. It felt like it would last forever. It felt like that moment would just stretch out into infinity and I’d be left sitting there, waiting and fearing the worst for the rest of my life. There’s nothing focuses the mind quite like major surgery, let me tell you.
Six months on, and the thing that amazes me most is how quickly I stopped thinking about it. For maybe three or four weeks I’d wake up on dialysis mornings and remember with a jolt that dialysis was no longer part of our lives. Only three or four weeks to wipe out two years of habit, and after that the “new life” we’d been looking forward to became simply “life”, and things were back to normal. Just like that.
It took much longer to shake that feeling of being somehow “other” that we’d carried around with us for two years. To be able to go out for dinner with friends, or bump into acquaintances, and not see that look of pity cross their faces as they asked how we were, and was there any news about the transplant? It took a while to feel that we were truly back to “normal”. Even now I’ll be out walking the dog, or filling up the car, or mowing the lawn, and I’ll be suddenly filled with this feeling of inexplicable joy. It always takes me a few seconds to identify just what it is, and why I’m feeling it, and then it will hit me: this is what “normal” feels like. This is how people feel when there’s nothing in particular to worry about. Wow, again.
I never want that feeling to go away. Six months ago today, I sat on that chair in the hospital reception area, and while I made all of those deals with a God I don’t believe in, the main thought going through my mind was that if you just let this work out OK I will never take normality for granted ever again. Because this “normality”? It terrifies me. More, even than the MOT thing. (The MOT was fine, by the way. A clean bill of health.) It’s a pretty fragile normality. It feels like it could fall and shatter at any second, and I’ve always said, there’s nothing more terrifying than hope.
I hope that this first six months is just the start of many more months of normality. I hope I get to feel that burst of “hey! There’s nothing wrong right now!” happiness at least a few more times before we’re done. I hope I never forget what December 15th, 2005 felt like – and how much better things are six months on.
Tags:
kidney transplant
Tagged kidney transplant
I hate myself. No, really. I mean, I was there to buy birthday presents for Terry and my dad. But they were right there in front of me and they were so pretty, and they were £50 reduced to £20 and…gah.
In my defence, I walked around with them in my hand for an entire hour while I tried to talk myself out of wanting them. In fact, I was concentrating so hard on not wanting the shoes that I almost walked out of the shop without paying for the thing I’d bought my dad for Father’s Day, and it’s a good job the sales assistant saw the funny side of that.
It’s like an illness with me, I swear. I just can’t help myself. I see shoes, I buy shoes. I can’t afford shoes, but hey! It’s like Carrie from Sex and the City said, "I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes." I am SO not joking here. HATE myself.
So, the World Cup, eh. Not a lot of people looking for a copywriter during the world cup, folks – unless, of course, they want a copywriter to write about the World Cup, in which case they’re sure as hell not going to choose me, because, gah. (Note: somebody totally did choose me to write copy about the World Cup, though. No, seriously. I think the world tilted on its axis just a little bit that day.)
Now, for the last six months I’ve been complaining about how busy I am, and how overworked I am, and how if only things would just quieten the hell down for a minute already, I’d be able to catch up with all of the things on my “to do” list, and things would be just fab. The reality, of course, is very different. In fact, the reality is that things only need to quieten down for a few seconds and I’m talking about the likelihood of the house being repossed, and ohmigod, what if no one EVER gives me any work EVER again, and we starve, and I never get to buy those black shoes that are exactly the same as the green shoes I bought in TK Maxx that time? WHAT IF, people?
We are not going to starve. The house is not going to be repossed. I still have work to do. (Which, actually? I should be doing right now, rather than writing this. Ah, well.) But because The Panic makes me constantly fear the worst, the quieter-than-usual spell we’ve been having this past couple of days has led me to switch the Google Adwords back on.
I have a strange and twisted relationship with Google adwords. On paper, it’s a very good thing. Highly targetted advertising! That you only pay for when someone clicks! Rah rah rah! In real life, though, a Google adwords campiagn is a lot like a baby. A small, fussy baby that you CANNOT LEAVE ALONE for even a minute, or it will pee on your sofa and run off with all your money. OK, maybe a teenager, then.
My Google adwords campaign is probably the most stressful thing I’ve ever owned. And yes, I know you can set a budget. Yes, I know you can set negative keywords and manage the whole thing to within an inch of its life. I know all this, but even so, I can’t seem to stop myself logging into my account every five minutes or so, convinced that in the short time since my last visit, my bill will now be sitting at five figures. And laughing at me.
So, Adwords is not for the faint-hearted. It’s also not something I’d recommend for those of you who like to over-analyse. (Yes, that would be me, again.) No clicks on the ads? Why? Why no clicks? What’s wrong with my ads? Are they not good enough? Are they not funny or smart of witty enough? Do the adverts make me look fat? Waaah! On the other hand, what if there are clicks but no sales? Ohmigodl they hate me! What’s wrong with my website? Why did they visit and not want to buy? Are they competitors, engaged in an evil plot to max out my budget and leave me with nothing? Who are they? Where do I find these people?!
You can, of course, see how all of this is going to end. It’s as transparent as the plot of Neighbours. But for now, adwords it is. Now excuse me while I go check my account…
Every so often, a song comes along that I become utterly obsessed with. The kind of song that has me singing off-key in the shower (for there is no other key for me to sing in) and waiting for Terry to leave the house so I can play the song over and over again, until I’m absolutely sick to death with it. This week’s obsession song is Nerina Pallot’s "Everybody’s Going to War", and just as the obsession started to fade, I had to go and find the video:
Totally obsessed, people. Also: I like her dress! (Also, again: some of the worst lip synching I ever did see!) When I grow up, I want to be Nerina Pallot, and if I can’t be Nerina Pallot, why I never want to grow up…
technorati: nerina pallot
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