I am living in a digital world, but I am not a digital girl

I spend too much time on the computer. It’s beginning to affect my productivity, creativity and stability. The more depressed I am, the more I just sit and stare at a screen. The more I sit on my ass and stare, the more depressed I get. So you see my dilemma. Vicious cycle, catch-22, all that jazz, to use just a few expressions.

I’ve already gotten used to not having a tv (going on 2 months now without one), so why not the internet? I would be forced to either read, do something useful in the flat, like clean or organise, get outside, come up with new ideas for playing with my daughter, visit friends, look for work or write something more meaningful than my usual daily diatribe.

This is a test, this is only a test.

Another one bites the dust

Thought we’d found a fantastic flat, in a great location. Georgian era, ground floor flat with private outdoor space, a basement for storage, two big bedrooms, a reasonably-sized living room and kitchen, nice bathroom, period features (large, arched windows, cornicing on the crown moulding, high ceilings, etc..) and even a little sun room leading out to the patio. All it needed was a good clean and a few fixtures done up and it would’ve been gorgeous. The price was a bit high, 10k over our max budget, but I liked it so much and thought it’d be such a good investment that we found the extra money and went to see it again today. We were prepared to put in an offer right there and then if Paul liked it. Paul’s dad even met us there to give it a once-over (he’s a surveyor so knows a lot about structure).

Not long before I left home, the estate agent rang to say that he’d actually shown me the wrong flat the day before and that that one was already sold. It was the one above it that was for sale. I was mightily annoyed but seeing as it was still the same price, same building and in the same great location, we decided it was still worth a look. With such nice parks nearby it isn’t a tragedy if we don’t have a garden. It would be nice but it’s not a must. So we went to see the upper floor flat and arrived at 1pm. The shit-for-brains agent informed us that, once again, there’d been a horrible screw-up and that the flat above wasn’t ready to be lived in yet. It needed a LOT of work done to make it livable, like, 25k worth of work, and that is was pretty much a shell at the moment. No water, wiring, etc… If we waited until the developer had it finished, the price would go up by 50k.

I wanted to be angry but all I could feel was disappointment and despair. Are we EVER going to find a place to live?! I wouldn’t usually talk about money and how much things cost but just to illustrate how hopeless this is and how bloody expensive it is in London right now, we have gone from a budget of £250k to £265k to now a max budget of £275k and we STILL can’t find anything that isn’t a grotty shithole and/or not near anything remotely interesting or convenient. We could live in a concrete high-rise building with hypodermic needles strewn around the parking lot, sure, but I don’t think I’d be happy there. I’m not asking for luxury, I just want a simple 2-bed apartment with a nice kitchen and a living room big enough to hold a sofa, an armchair, some bookshelves, a TV and a table for two to eat at. I’m willing to compromise on many things (the garden, the condition and size of the bathroom, size of rooms, whether it is ex-council or not) but I am not willing to be completely ass-raped by this market and still end up living in a dump.

Jesus. Maybe I’m being a real snob, I don’t know. Maybe I should be okay with living on the 22nd floor of a concrete jungle with shopping carts blocking the stairway and paying over a quarter of a mill to do so. Maybe I’m being really unreasonable. But I’m losing hope, quickly, that we will ever find anything. Maybe this is my curse, my punishment for not getting with the program and buying a few years ago when the market was fantastic. Friends of ours who bought their 2-bed flats three or four years ago are making £80k+ profits. Assholes. I hate them all.

We have the worst luck.

Playing House

I’ve slowly come to realise something lately.

My flat isn’t just my flat anymore, the place where I live, store my things, watch TV, eat, sleep and shower. To most people (of my age, anyway), a rented apartment is exactly those things. It serves a purpose, has a function and fits around the particulars of one’s life. That used to be me too.

But now. Now that I’m here all the time, for an average of 22.5 hours of every 24 in a day, it’s my office, my domain, my universe, my cell, my dream factory, my nucleus — and my responsibility. No matter how much my husband ‘helps’ or does things ‘for me’ (his words), these four walls, and everything that happens within them, are my responsibility because it is what I do now. This is my territory. Right or wrong, and against whichever principles, it is mine in a tangible way that didn’t exist before.

When I am out with friends, meeting new people, I often look out over the brim of my wine glass, mid-chortle, and then stop short because my ears begin to hear that familiar question: “And what do YOU do?” When the answer comes, smiles often falter and eyes often drop, even if briefly, as the questioner mumbles a “that’s nice” and flicks their eyes around the room in search of a new conversation, a route of escape. At that moment, something inside me both wilts and rages, like a flower whose pollen gets brighter the nearer to death it comes, stem arching like a ballerina bowing her body to the floor in what could be interpreted as either gracefulness or defeat.

I used to think, as a child and as a young woman, that being responsible for a house wasn’t much of ‘doing’ anything, just a cop out for women who never got over playing dress up with Mother’s pearls and who were too lazy, stupid or weird to get a job and use their brains. I never knew the pull of love, the sweetness of a baby’s smile, the pain in a mother’s heart when she hears her child cry, and what kind of effect that can have on a decision you thought you’d made long ago. I used to secretly sneer at those women, feeling superior in my certainty that I would return to work within months of the birth while they wasted away their skills, brains and the best years of their lives in a box in a suburb. I am now that woman and oh, do we reap what we sow.

Now I know what it is to be Hercules, but with the weight of the Home upon my shoulders instead of the World. It is my albatross, my assignment, my tour of duty. And like a soldier at war, there is no clocking out. There is no going home at the end of the day. Motherhood and domesticity have no coffee breaks.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not expecting martyrdom for this. I am not going to list the myriad of things I do all day or go into excruciating detail of how this place would crumble down to the ground without me. That would be defensiveness talking, a yearning within myself to justify my actions and decisions to others; others who may not understand or care to. It is merely the vastness of it all and how it conflicts with some of my core beliefs, that is just recently hitting me.

Because he works out of the house all day, anything my husband does to help in the evenings is a ‘bonus’. If he does the dishes, he says he did them for me. I know that part of this is that he just likes to tease me and he knows that phrase drives me mad, but I know the man well enough to know when he’s joking and when those are the words that came naturally to him, without thinking or joking. And as much as I know he loves me and values what I do as a full-time parent to our child, the house is still my obligation, even when we’ve both worked our 9-5 at our respective ‘jobs’ and are at home as equals. Part of me wants to lash out at that and strike it down. As a tried-and-true feminist, it goes against my belief system. But years of arguing, failing to understand how a man can really not remember to put a new liner in the trash can when he takes the garbage out, crying, pleading, reasoning, ignoring, rationalising and coming thisclose to giving up on it altogether have made me weary. And now that the Home is so much more to me than where I hang my hat, I wonder if anything needs to change or if I just need to redefine my idea of what the keeper of it does. Maybe I don’t actually want to relinquish control of my domain. Maybe I sabotage myself by expecting things to be a certain way and getting so upset when they’re not because this is all I have now. Or maybe it’s only come to matter so much because now it MEANS so much as well. I still don’t know, but I’m searching for answers, seeing as current methods and trains of thought aren’t working.

I’m very lucky in that my passion and my (prospective) career happen to be one in the same. And by writing in this blog, Londonist, and other outlets of creativity, I am still ‘using my brain’. This is furthering my opportunities, furthering my life. Not least of all because learning love and patience and humility are never wasted. I can’t say that I ever dreamed of this life, dreamed of playing peekaboo with a mischievous blonde who looks insanely like my husband but acts oh-so-much like me, while desperately writing and communicating and hoping and learning and reaching out to the vast unknown with the other. But if this is considered ‘playing house’, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had pretending. And it sure feels real to me.

Conspiracy Graffiti

How bizarre. Is this viral marketing, a BBC conspiracy or is this man just mental?

I like the bit in the video where he says he phoned the BBC and told them he ‘keeps seeing and hearing these words’ and they hung up on him. What did you expect, dude? When you start talking crazy talk like that, people tend to shut off.

I’ll be following this with interest and will update if I find out anything more.

Humiliation…NS Style

Oh, this poor woman. To be featured on a well-known local website, with your picture and everything, only to discover that your gleaming smile and dedication to running are NOT the things getting you noticed.

I can only hope that she hadn’t told all of her friends and family about it. I bet her father is really hoping she doesn’t mention it either. Who wants to talk about nipples, especially public viewing of said nipples, with their dad? I had to laugh at two things in the interview though — one, that she claims to not have been drinking since January. Sweetie, start drinking again, pronto. Being sober obviously clouds your mind significantly, enough to make you send in THIS particular photo of yourself for a website to publish. And two, the irony in her answer to the question “Do you have a funny training story you’d like to share?” in which she answered that she didn’t, really. Stephanie, do you ever have a story now!

Okay, I feel kind of bad now. This woman has been embarrassed and I am laughing at that. So just to show that I am an Equal Opportunity Humiliater, I will tell you a few things about me that I’m not crazy about other people knowing.

• When I’m concentrating really hard on something, especially if it involves writing or drawing on paper, I tend to open my mouth and tilt my jaw to the side while I knot my brow. It looks strange as fuck, I’m sure. I used to do it all the time as a kid. I’ve mostly outgrown it now but every now and then I catch myself doing it and thank god that no one has (seemed to) notice, or at least had the decency not to mention it.

• My nickname all throughout high school was Tit, and several variations of that name, including Titty, Titty Monster, Titty Mama and Titster. Don’t ask how I got the name because I’m not going to tell you. But I can guarantee that whatever comes to your dirty little mind will be way more exciting than the real explanation.

• I had to dress up like a fox for a job a couple years ago. Just for a couple hours and only the one time, but working for an animal welfare charity requires some strange things and being the newbie sucks ass. The worst part of this? I had to get on public transportation wearing that hot-ass costume and one of my co-workers had to lead me around because I couldn’t see through the giant fox head. Then I had to pose for a picture with a smarmy, crusty old politician who kept making jokes about me being ‘foxy.’ Did you know that a giant fox head can double as a vomit receptacle?

So there you go. I’m not a mean old bitch who enjoys humiliating others, I’m just sharing and caring, as usual. It’s kind of cathartic, really. Once it’s out there for others to see it’s no longer embarrassing. I can say that though, my shirt isn’t as transparent as Anna Nicole’s motives when she married that billionaire geezer.

Sleep and Sun

Aaaaggghhh! It appears that Amelia is perhaps moving from having two naps (one about 2 hours after she wakes up and another in the late afternoon, around 3.30 or 4) to one late-morning or lunchtime nap. The past few days she hasn’t wanted to go down at her usual time and even when she is rubbing her eyes a bit, screams and refuses to lay down. She’s still great at going to bed at night, but the naps have always been more of a struggle. Not to mention the fact that if she moves to one nap, I will have only one window of time in which to write (both for Londonist and this blog), do chores, make phone calls, send emails and have a shower. I can forget having time to exercise during naptime now too! That plus shower would take up my entire ‘window’ and I have to do my writing and take care of the flat and carry on with the house hunting first. Blah. I know I’ll adjust but I don’t wanna. It’s so unfair that I can’t whine anymore and I have to be the adult.

At least it’s a gorgeous day and was all weekend as well. We spent yesterday out in Paul’s parents’ garden, having a bbq and lazing around on a blanket in the shade, reading the Sunday papers and playing with Amelia.

Thanks to my parents for the gorgeous outfits they sent for Amelia. I adore the little skirts and tops, they’ll be perfect for summer. Check out her first piece of jewelry too, that little silver charm bracelet hanging from her wrist. That was a gift from her godfather, Tim, for her birthday. Baby’s first bling!

I’m loving that it feels like summer. I broke out the summer suitcase yesterday and got out my sleeveless tops, skirts and sandals. Hurrah! I love long flowy skirts in summer. So comfortable. Good timing too since my jeans are falling apart and I can’t get a new pair for awhile. I actually felt hot yesterday and had to get out of the sun. My fair skin in the heat is like parchment paper near an open flame so I have to be really careful or I burn horribly. I don’t dig on sunbathing much. I like to think of myself as ‘pale and unusual’ when I stand next to my tanned friends. It also makes me feel better to imagine them as giant leather handbags when they get older and the brown spots on their faces and arms look disgusting. It’s the only way I get through the summer with all the ‘ooh, your legs are blinding me’ comments.

Dang it. I thought she’d finally drifted off to sleep but not a chance. She’s babbling away in her cot and still refusing sleep. Guess she’s going to have to come into the bathroom with me while I shower and then I’ll have to write my Londonist stuff when she finally graces me with some peace and quiet. Sigh.

Happy Monday! Enjoy the sunshine if ya’ got it.

A Letter To Lisa

Dear Lisa,

You are due with your first baby in just over three weeks. The dutiful act of bearing that physical burden is almost over.

Consider pregnancy as a marathon: you start out with all the confidence in the world, running steadily and freely while the finish line is just a speck in the distance. You gain speed and began showing outward signs of your effort. You slow a bit. Fatigue hits and at the halfway mark, the newness erodes and you feel that mid-run slump. You soldier on, your legs carrying you even when your body is crumbling and your mind screaming “what the hell are you doing?!” You mourn a strange sense of loss — of yourself. You are no longer Lisa, running a marathon. You are the marathon and somewhere in there is Lisa. Spectators watch from the sidelines, remarking freely on your physique and ability, how you hold yourself. They speculate and ruminate and don’t bother to whisper, even when their remarks are hurtful and asinine. You keep running.

Only a few miles to go and you think you cannot go on. You down water like a madwoman, trying to squelch a thirst that cannot be quenched. You go into a zone, totally focused on nothing but yourself and your body and your raging heart’s desire to carry on. It has no choice. There is no stopping now. Your breathing, once errant and raspy, becomes steady now. As you crest the hill, you can see the sun just peeking out over the horizon and the ribbon at the finish line fluttering in the breeze. Your body tenses and contracts, ready for the final sprint. Your mind at once embraces and repels the idea of pushing forward in what is the hardest part of the race. It spins and questions and fears. But soon it is quieted by the body, for the body is finishing the race, at the behest of the mind. There is no going back.

A fear may overcome you as things spiral out of your control. Do not be afraid. For the moment your foot falls upon the dirt just beyond the white-chalked line and a jubilant cry of “You’ve done it! You’ve won!”, the joyousness, the triumphant glow of your achievement, will be looking you in the eye. And it will be hungry!

Even though you run alone, I am here every step of the way. I won’t see you cross that finish line but know I will be there in spirit, cheering you on and passing on the eternal love and encouragement of a million years of a million mothers who have run the same race. Each journey is individual and every one is special. Make it yours. Run the race you’ve envisioned in your innermost heart, but also learn to let go if you inadvertently stumble. Be kind to yourself. Stay strong. A journey like no other is upon you, one that encompasses all the realms of ourselves — physical, spiritual, emotional, mental. It’s a hell of a ride, so hang on.

Welcome to motherhood.

Home Is Where The Heartache Is

We began looking to buy our first place a couple months ago. First, it started out as a search for a 3-bedroom house in the ‘burbs, somewhere where our family would have room to grow. After realising that this just wasn’t going to happen on our budget, in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, we downshifted to 2-bed houses or ground floor flats with a garden. Even that was proving difficult to find. I was getting so frustrated and felt hopeless that we would ever find a place we loved. I even started another blog to bitch about it so I wouldn’t have to bore you with all the details.

As you can see from the most recent entry on that blog, we had found a place a we love a couple days ago. Paul had arranged an appointment to see this 2-bed house in an area not far from here (but further into the city — zone 4) and I met him after work with the babe to view it. It was barely a 5-minute walk from the station and shops and there was a nursery and a playground on the same street as the house. So far so good. The outside of the house was nice — flanked by a pink house on the left and a blue house on the right, its beige tones were subtle and a nice break in the bright colours. The estate agent who met us there told us that the house is over 100 years old, a Victorian period cottage. That sparked my interest immensely: I looove Victorian era stuff and like a house with a bit of character. We walked inside and within 2 minutes of being there, I knew. It was the house for us. Arched doorways, beautiful wooden floors, little nooks and inset windows, a large kitchen with a door leading out to a nice little garden, a huge bathroom and very nice bedrooms. I was sold.

Paul and I started whispering offers while the agent went to let the next round of viewers in and we decided to go in at £2k under the asking price. We got the agent outside for a chat and told him we were really interested. We were told that another couple had made an offer an hour before for the full asking price so we’d have to match that to be considered. We agreed and told him we’d fax over our formal offer in the morning. We left on a cloud, elated and nervous. I began imagining myself living there, raising my daughter, writing out in the garden, cooking meals in the fabulous kitchen, taking nice long baths in the huge bathroom and just generally being happy. I wanted that house.

We faxed and emailed over our formal offer, throwing in an extra £1,000 to show we were really serious. We were told a decision would be made by the end of the day. I had butterflies in my stomach, alternating between excitement and dread, all afternoon as I waited to hear something. At about 4pm, I got a call from the agent. Even though ours was the highest offer made that day, the owner had decided to let it remain on the market over the weekend and do more viewings to see if he could get more for it. Greedy bugger! I mean, I understand his point of view — his place just went on the market the day before and had had three offers at or above the asking price already. When the agency told prospective buyers who phoned that day that it was under offer, they started going to the property itself and knocking on the door, asking to see it! So the owner wants to leave it on for a few more days and see what happens. That means we have a slim-to-none chance of remaining in the running. If people were desperate enough to go knock on the door, I’m sure they won’t have a problem offering a few grand more than the asking price. Sighhhhh.

Our only hope is that whoever makes a higher offer than us this weekend is in a chain and hasn’t sold their house yet or don’t have their mortgage sorted out already. We do and that does go in our favour, but money talks. If these owners are seduced more by the appeal of an extra few thousand as opposed to sealing the deal immediately with solid buyers, I’m sure they’ll take the risk and wait it out to squeeze a few more pounds out of it. We shall see. But it doesn’t look good.

They say when you buy your first house that you’ll almost inevitably lose one you had your heart set on. I know that and I know I should just move on and accept that this happens, but it’s hard to let go when we were so close. It’s a lesson in house hunting but it’s also a lesson in heartache — don’t let it sting too long. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going. I’ll just have to keep believing.

Soldier. Sailor. Celebrity?

I have a (most likely rather unpopular) bone to pick with the British sailors who were captured in Iran and held for nearly two weeks before being released. More specifically, with the lone female amongst the crew, Faye Turney.

Maybe it’s the extreme cynic in me. Maybe it’s my admitted distaste for the military. Or maybe it’s because I used to be a Navy girlfriend: my ex joined the service while we were dating and I spent over 2 years attending Navy events, visiting him on huge, soulless Destroyers during port calls in Virginia and going months without knowing where in the world (literally) he was while out at sea. It was hard watching someone I loved be ‘broken’ by the Navy, brain washed and physically punished for something as simple as omitting the first word from the ’sir, yes sir’ response of incoming boot campers. At a time when I was learning to be independent, questioning authority and learning the merits of individualism, I couldn’t understand why the man I loved, someone infamous in our home town for flying under the radar, wanted to give all of that up and let himself be indoctrinated with someone else’s ideals, someone else’s decree of Right and Wrong. I tried to be supportive but in the end, I couldn’t forgive him for deserting me with no warning (he joined a couple days before Christmas without discussing it with me and left on New Years Day), for forcing me into a role I abhorred, and for willingly becoming part of the national war machine I detested. I broke his heart and for that I will always feel badly, but I don’t regret my decision one bit. Some people find it easy and honorable to be involved in the military, even in an associated way. I am not one of them. But I don’t have to be because I didn’t join. I didn’t promise to serve and protect my country by defending its borders and security. Faye Turney did.

Turney is a Leading Seaman with the Royal Navy. She joined willingly, has served for nine years, and went on missions in the Middle East as part of her job. By all accounts she is no shrinking violet and is more than happy to be ‘one of the boys’, playing the game by men’s standards. No tears, no fears, lots of beers. Or something like that. But the media singled her out as somehow more vulnerable, in a more precarious position than the 14 male captives. Newspapers and tv reporters began calling her the ‘human face of this tragedy’ and continually referred to her daughter and husband waiting at home, which really got to me. Are the men not just as human, just as scared, just as important to their families? Some might think it gallant that many still value women and children more highly than men in life-threatening situations. Bullshit. Even if the intentions and sentiment appear harmless, noble even, they aren’t. We have become so indoctrinated with the idea that women need saving that even some of the so-called feminists bemoaned the fact that a mother was in peril. The British government lapped it up, knowing that the more vulnerable Turney seemed and the more public support she had, the more heartless and evil it made the Iranians look. They’re not idiots, Blair and Co.

It sickens me that we still tie in motherhood with ideas of home and country, as something worth going to war over, when, in reality, being a mother doesn’t mean shit to anyone but her family. To use and exploit motherhood to evoke emotions in the public, emotions everyone thinks are valid and chivalrous, is to further male-dominated agendas and knock women’s lib down a peg or two. The message is clear: the men were brave, the woman was saved. And now that she’s selling her story, insisting that it’s something ‘extraordinary’ when it was her job, what she signed up to do, pisses me off even more. There is nothing extraordinary about being a woman, being a mother, and being in the military. Millions of women do it every day. To pretend otherwise is to confirm what many have known all along — women are still not equal, in the boardroom or in the war zones, both at home and abroad. Turney exemplifies this and willingly makes herself a part of that prejudice.

In today’s news articles, Turney tells of how when she was forced to write those letters, criticizing the British and American governments, she felt like a traitor. Cue soothing sounds and the proverbial pat on the head, everyone telling her she did no such thing, she was doing what she was forced to do. And no, she did not betray her country that day. Her betrayal was much more subtle and on a much larger scale — the millions of females in the military. She’s just made their job a whole hell of a lot harder. And that, to me, is unforgivable.

Sushi & Culture

Jen has already posted about our day together in London but it was so good that I had to as well! We met at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A, as it commonly referred to) on Friday and went from there to a fabulous sushi restaurant, Itsu. Lovely tuna sashimi, avocado rolls, salmon, sesame seed- encrusted spinach rolls, duck, beef, edamame, jasmine tea….it was sushi heaven. I’m officially hooked.

After that, we headed back to the museum and wandered around for a couple hours. I had, amazingly, never been to the V&A so I was fascinated. It’s one of my favourite museums now! I adored the glass, photography, silver, wrought iron, fashion and musical instruments sections and there were many more I didn’t get to see. Subsequent trips are definitely in order.

See the entire set in a slideshow here