Whither All the Children?

I was on the couch eating a bowl of cabbage and marvelling at the deliciousness of this rather innocuous vegetable when I wondered why it is that adults in developed nations are trying to dupe their children into eating vegetables by hiding them in brownies? It seems like a daft idea, but Jerry Seinfeld’s wife actually wrote a cook book about it, and then was subsequently sued by someone else who claimed to have the idea first. Hey ladies, I’ve got an idea for you, what about just feeding your kids the damn vegetables rather than being all underhand about it? Surely all this conspiracy vegetable feeding is just adding fuel to the fire of the anti-veg crusade lead by these little brats. If they’re so awful they need to be hidden, well duh, who wants to eat them in all their original glory?

All the vegetable musing led to the general contemplation of the state of childhood today. When did we all start becoming so terrified that the darlings endure the usual childhood rites of passage? My roommate has friends who are primary school teachers who fully support the daft notion of not marking their pupils work in red, lest their precious self esteem is offended by all those red crosses (apparently the positive notion of red ticks isn’t considered). I wonder what colour they use instead, and what the possible damaging connotations of purple or green could have on their delicate psyches. Perhaps they’ll have an aversion to royalty, or grow up to be extremely jealous and totally environmentally apathetic.

Things I Love Edition

I’m in a particularly happy, sweet, sharing mood today, and before I inevitably get around to ruining this marshmallow cloud, here’s some happy stuff I love and rarely talk about because I fear it humanises me:

photo credit: Rupert Singleton

My brain is an ass-et.

My head has special needs. I have seen more specialists about my head than all my other body parts combined – and I am fairly average where body parts are concerned. Not satisfied with the all the psychiatric attention it receives, (oh, like you couldn’t figure out I was slightly unstable by yourselves?) it has discovered a new way to garner attention: it aches. So simple. It aches from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. It aches through a haze of weed, it aches through the fog of whiskey. It aches through prescription pain killers, and through the over-the-counter ones as well. And it aches through all of these aides combined, although it was a little more fun. (The image makes sense after the jump, I swear.)

Like Mother, Like Daughter.

I’ve never been one to fuss much about mess and general disorder, as long as I knew that what was underneath was reasonably clean. Granted, I’ve been living alone for the last few years and, like a pig, became comfortable in my own filth. I could tell you how long ago the deserted tea cup by the couch actually contained tea, the number of hours the dress draped artfully over the kitchen chair has left before it’s necessary to wash it, even where the very important piece of paper resides amongst the disorder. Despite all this slovenly behaviour, it was my mess, and my mess and I coexisted quite happily together; most importantly my toilet was always clean. Alas, that was then, and this is now.

Of late, I find myself in the somewhat awkward situation of co-habitation. Apart from the obvious readjustments one must undertake so as to make living with others bearable, I’ve found that I have started to slowly morph into my mother. Perhaps being alone meant that I was able to quash any domestic abilities that threatened to come to fore as there was no need to please or appease anyone but myself. It could be location, it could be situation, it could be some warped version of maturity. None of which, however, comes close to explaining why I’ve started turning into my mother.

Don’t feel bad (it’s time for bed).

There’s a time in life when things just work out and conform to every chick flick, chick lit and chick shit cliché and you find yourself living the quintessential rebound scenario – the one that is supposed to be so bad for you, but temporarily feels so right; when all odds conspire to make life shite and difficult, you throw caution to the wind and embark on what should be the most disastrous relationship ever, and it works out just right.

I’ve been musing on the concept of a “prebound”, in perfect opposition to the rebound, ie: the seemingly mature and adult relationship where you discuss living together and babies vs abortion and validate marriage for more logical reasons than love. From my vast uncredited study in the pop culture and economy of woman, I’ve deduced that a protagonist is required to have one solid and ultimately failed relationship (the prebound) before she unexpectedly (and somewhat reluctantly) submits to the wisdom of the eccentric aunt, marginalised sassy black bff and harassed mother of pooping toddlers and realises that what she was looking for was there all along. Such is life.

So, I’d like to say to my ex: thank you. You were a fucking arse, but at least I realised that what I wanted was waiting for me; he was here all the time – it just took you to make me see that I deserved better, and that I deserved Schmoo. In a way, you gave me the world by testing me, trying my heart and making me understand that what I believed was inevitable in life is actually a total farce. Loving someone is not meant to be a trial or battle of patience and forgiveness, it’s supposed to be fucking awesome. And it is.

Every single moment I am with Schmoo I want to be there, and every second he sleeps by my side is the most perfect, encapsulated and linked in a never ending sequence of inhales, exhales. No more the fear that sleep is an escape from reality and present company. Maybe I would have found this eventually, maybe one day in some unknown future. All I know right now is that without the emotional suckass of that prebound, I might never have known this happiness that sleeps next to me tonight. If a prebound and all the attending bullshit is necessary to be sure that in the here and now, even midnight flatulence (his, please) is going to make me laugh as I drift off to sleep, I’ll wager it’s worth it. It’s time for me to not feel bad for what was supposed to be, and go to bed smiling because this is the way it is.

And I will wake him up in a bit and whisper in his ear and we’ll shuffle off down the hall and fall out of our clothes and tumble asleep, knowing that tomorrow will always be sunshine.

A little dollop of hot, controversial wax.

In case you haven’t ever had sex, or thought about it, or worried about going blind by wanking too much, there’s this little debate running around endlessly in circles about pubes. Waxing, shaving, leaving, trimming, licking, eating, blah blah blah.

I like to just whip it all off. I tried to leave the stripe, but it looked like a mole beard (you know, the straggly little hairs that populate moles, as such) and freaked me the fuck out. Never had any complaints. Although, in hindsight, I doubt any dude would actually get all the way there and then say “oh, your vagina looks weird” and spontaneously deflate. Highly unlikely scenario.

Dildo.

I bet you a man made up that word. Could you find a less threatening, silly sounding word for a penis substitute?

Kevin Rudd: awesome dude.

I ran away from work today. Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting that considering someone I know in an unforseen universe of cool people that I don’t work with might take the time out of their day to stop sucking client cock and spend more time wanking over my brilliant literary feats. But as I know no one who actually wanks over this blog, (with the exception of Johnny who most definitely does not care whether I am at work or not) all I have to say is “ha! suckers!” to everyone else. And, just in case you want to fire me, I should clarify that while I ran away from work, I am still working … remotely, in a space station of coolness that is not called the agency.

Soft porn and what it taught me about buying jeans.

I’m one of those weird girls who don’t really enjoy shopping. It might have something to do with being a midget, or that I have no money, I don’t know – your guess is probably more accurate than mine. If guessing was graded at school, I would have got a doctor’s note from my psychiatrist so I could nap instead because guessing makes me nervous and I’m already prone to panic attacks. Plus I’m not very good at it, absolutely useless at having a gamble. My mind can’t remember the basic rules of poker lest I am accidentally lured into a smokey room full of dodgy (but oh so sexy) looking gentlemen who are dealing. Or something like that. My parents have always told me that practise makes perfect, but somehow I just don’t think I’ll be doing that any time soon. I suppose if I practised more shopping, then I wouldn’t end up with a pair of pale yellow jeans. Euw, I know, they sound hideous – and I think they very well might be. You see, not being very accomplished when it comes to shopping, I don’t really understand the process behind it. I either wander around and get nervous when well-meaning sales assistants say hi, or else I mistakenly buy the same pair of jeans I got a few months ago. True story: I have two pairs of black Sass & Bides, bought 2 months apart, that fit for about an hour after they come out of the dryer, then the arse gets saggy. Right, so a few months ago I got an awesome pair of skinny bright blue jeans. It was after a ballet class and before one of those interminably long afternoons I used to spend at Pacific Coffee at IFC (yes, I know I’m allergic to coffee, I had tea instead) and the colour caught my eye. It took me twenty minutes to figure out my size, and muffin-top-to-stretch-ratio (new jeans are always too tight, but then they stretch out and sit more comfortably so it’s always best to get them snug – as I obviously didn’t learn with the two pairs of Sass) and whether I would love or feel too self conscious about the colour. I eventually got them and have loved half the colour away. Sad. In a random turn of events, I ended up at the very same place today, and lo and behold there was a pair of jeans in my size, on sale! Wow! They were yellow. I bought them, can’t return them and not sure if I should wear them. They’re awfully, well, unusual. And they’re sitting on the couch next to me and I can’t look away – it’s like a car accident. Although I don’t like looking at car accidents, I have an amazing ability to turn away from things when I so desire – like Edison’s peen on the internet. Never looked, cross-my-heart ‘n all that. I have a feeling that these yellow jeans are going to be the equivalent of personal-turned-public soft porn antics – a dire warning not to dabble in what you might be mortally embarrassed about in the future.

Sadness comes naturally.

I haven’t written anything at all this year, so I may as well start with a sad sigh.

Late last year one of my very lovely good friends from New York had a girlfriend. Late last year, but one day later, he didn’t. Being so far away, I was removed from the loss, the mourning, the guilt, the comfort and the collective sadness that breeds and infects everyone within the friendship radius. I could ask no questions that wouldn’t be insensitive, could express no emotion that wouldn’t be trite. I couldn’t hug him, sit with him, drink with him, cry with him and, worse still, I couldn’t talk to him. He was cocooned in a patchwork quilt of friends, I was sitting in a box apt in a city of millions stacked one on top of the other, and there wasn’t one other person who knew of this tragedy. Basically, it sucked big time. Now it’s 2008, and we’ve talked. We started on IM, testing the waters, and then blew up into emails, songs and blog-sharing. I think I’m the first and only person to have read his blog, and it makes me feel like I finally (and selfishly) have a place in his grief.

Anyway, I wrote him an email and it’s maybe the most honest thing I’ll write all year so I thought I may as well share it (get the earnestness done nice and early so we can have a year of irreverence):