Sunnyside

My flat was only just on the wrong side of the Muckleneuk/Sunnyside border, far enough from Esselen Street not to be classified as part of what was better known as "Scummyside".
Feels strange to look back at that time. Was it really me? That scrawny thing with the shaved head and the bare feet, drinking cheap wine and being depressed about boys? Was it me hanging out with that pretty Irish girl who lived around the corner, trying hard to hide how utterly crude, ungraceful I felt beside her?

I got an e-mail from my Irish friend the other day.

"Maybe one day you'll write a story of Sunnyside. Remember when you passed out, bare foot in the doorway of a restaurant?! It was so NOT funny at the time!!"

Ah, yes. I was actually on my way to the ATM next door, but my head started tingling the way it does when I'm about to faint, and I headed for the restaurant to ask for a glass of water. And when I regained consciousness a minute or two later, there were unfamiliar faces peering at me from all sides and someone in the background was asking whether they should call for an ambulance.
Barcelos. That's what the place was called.
The owner happened to be there at the time and I was unable to leave his establishment before he'd practically force fed me a quarter chicken meal and refused to accept my money...

Needless to say, I don't shave my head anymore.

Getting It Off My Chest

I spent the whole day yesterday falling about between rage and remorse after a particularly ugly screaming match with David before breakfast. That I was feeling especially emotional was not surprising, my favourite time of the month being upon me once again. But I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately. About how I seem to spend every conscious moment walking the tightrope between self restraint and involuntary, convulsive bursts of violent obscenity, and about how there's something wrong when it's been that way so long that no-one thinks it unusual anymore...
And then I went home and wept like I used to when I was fourteen and the boy of the moment already had a very pretty girlfriend with boobs.

It's been this way for a while now, and I'm fairly sure it has something to do with the contraceptive pill I'm taking, since the mood swings and the chest pains and the false pregnancy alarms and the bad skin and the weight gain all (okay, mostly) started a month or so after I started this pill, and have been getting worse with each passing month. It's only the sudden appearance of something a little bit like a pair of boobs on my chest that hasn't been all bad.
So I've made an appointment to see a doctor and look into other forms of birth control.
Because it's just so damned exhausting to be such an insufferable bitch all the time.
And boobs? Dude, they're waaaay overrated!

Enviro-cop

When I arrived in Dubai a bit less than two years ago, I was amazed at how clean everything seemed. And while I'm happy to admit that coming here was my great escape from a particularly unpleasant set of circumstances, I'm pretty sure that the apparent cleanliness of the streets of Dubai was not entirely imagined. The city's expansion rate being what it is, though, I've watched the shine fade and seen the plastic bags, food containers, sweet wrappers and other junk floating on gusts of wind, settling in desert-dusty corners. I've watched people dump their cigarette butts, their garbage and their manners, along with their saliva and phlegm on the city sidewalks as they casually pass me by, unfazed by my disgusted expression.
So, a couple of days ago, when I watched a young woman casually plant her empty polystyrene cup in the middle of a parking lot before getting into a car to leave, I wasn't really surprized.
I sat in my window seat in the bakery a block down from my office, newspaper spread open on the table in front of me, shaking my head and thinking how sad it is that it doesn't even occur to people like that young woman that what she'd just done was wrong. I sat there watching that car, listening to the engine as it started up. And by the time the reverse lights came on, I was tapping on the window where the young woman sat. She wound the window down. I turned around, bent down and retrieved her empty cup and told her, "Excuse me. You forgot this."
The look on her face as she took that cup from me told me she knew perfectly well that she shouldn't have dumped it. It told me that she was embarrassed at having been caught in the act.
It occurred to me as I walked back to my seat that she would probably just chuck it out of the window when she'd gone around the corner anyway. But just for a moment I thought that maybe she'd think twice before she tried that again, and I smiled a quiet smile to myself.

We finally managed to borrow a copy of "Finding Nemo" from friends, more than a year after its release on DVD. And my kids, of course, fell instantly and irrevocably in love with each and every one of those brilliant characters.
It was probably as much PMS-related BTS (Bad Taste Syndrome) as at the thought of my little ones' enjoyment that I bought the ocean themed shower curtain that now blights what was originally supposed to be a modern, minimalistic, functional and supercool bathroom.
It started one morning as I stood in the shower and David brought the kids into the bathroom to brush their teeth before they set off on their morning rush to daycare. My son, Michael, noticing for the first time that the shower curtain has "Meemoes" on it, had to come over for a closer look. "Closer look" meaning to swipe at the curtain and see if anything happens, much like a cat would do with a praying mantis. It was a fun new game. And as the curtain stuck itself to my wet thighs for the umpteenth time, I snarled and shouted "I'm having fish for dinner tonight!", a la the big fish in "Finding Nemo". And thus was born my morning shower persona. It has become part of the morning routine for the kids to come into the bathroom and have a thrilling, chilling chat with Bruce the Shark.
The other morning, though, as David ushered the kids into the bathroom to say hello to Bruce, not realizing that Bruce was having a hormone-induced psychotic break, and wasn't up to receiving guests, it went a bit pear shaped. My ever loving husband pulled back the curtain to find my grey eyes staring icily at him, my "notice-the-nervy-edge-in-my-deceptively-calm-voice" response to the shock of cold air interrupting my Me Time being, "I'm not in the mood. Close the curtain". And as the seconds passed, David playfully cajolling and pleading with me to indulge the little ones, me losing my cool at a rapidly accelerating rate, the water pressure dropped. And then the water was gone. And then I was rabid. And I won't repeat the words that streamed from my very nearly foaming mouth as my long-suffering hubby guided the kids out of the front door to escape The Wrath.
The mood blew over as I went about the business of the day, which essentially amounted to reading random blogs, chatting with the girls in the office and hanging my head in shame as I recounted the morning's outburst for their amusement.And when I came home, it was to find that the little whiteboard on our kitchen door, on which we scribble the odd message from time to time, now sported a cartoon depicting the morning's adventure:


Oh, the therapy bills we have to look forward to!

Retard

Right. So the reason I've been giving for being absent from my life in general lately is that I've been preparing for exams, which started today, and it's one down, five to go. And the really real reason I haven't posted anything lately - or been terribly present in my life in any other way either - is that I have fallen to a new low on the unchartable end of retardedness and I simply have nothing to say at the moment, except that studying ancient Greek culture and finding out a day before you write the exam that you should have been studying ancient Roman culture is an honest mistake and any idiot could've made it. That idiot happens to have been me. I'm trying very hard not to solidify into rock as I sit here typing this post, whilst simultaneously making mental notes to actually consult my exam timetable in future.
This morning's exam went as well as could be expected. Which means that I waffled as well as I could on those questions I could at least vaguely pretend I'd studied the relevant material for. I didn't push my luck on the stuff I hadn't even looked at. That would just be wasting everyone's time and probably pissing off the lecturer...
Oh, well. Next one can only be a whole lot better!