New Rules

It's been a long break of not having time to write anything for myself, but, for today at least, I'm back! I've been caught up not only with some demanding paid writing work (it's terrible pay but I'm building up my portfolio of business, finance, politics and health/fitness articles, so hurrah to that!) but also with the trials and tribulations of living with a Czech boyfriend. Emphasis on the word 'boy'. Oh, how I long to be with a person who can be an adult at home as well as at work. My survival here depends, I have realised, on being able to negotiate enough time away from him or to myself to be able to cope with whatever is thrown at me and an unwritten rule to never, I repeat, never, expect or hope for kindness, understanding, love and affection given without prompting, or washing up completed by anyone except me.

These are the new rules in my current living situation:

1) Do not expect anyone to do any of the following: make tea in the morning, make meals at any time, do food shopping, washing up or any general cleaning unless it is you.

2) Get to bed before the other person so that you don't have to get into late-night difficult conversations that destroy all hope of sleep.

3) If you leave nice, loving post-it notes, thank you notes to accompany a red rose you bought, or buy special little things while food shopping just for the other person, do not under any circumstances hope for reciprocation of any kind.

4) Buy your own red wine and drink it while the other person is out.

5) Have a 'coffee fund' to escape the flat more often when suburbia and the quiet isolation of being in a flat you didn't want to live in in the first place begin to grate.

6) Make "acceptance, acceptance, acceptance" your new 'political party of one' manifesto.

7) Wear nice clothes while you can because you never known when the next Czech bank holiday might creep up on you and force you to accept a prolonged trip to the mountains to wear a hiker's uniform that makes you feel frumpy. (That would be the coming weekend.)

8) Be supremely grateful for rent-free living because this is the huge advantage that makes up for it all while income is slow to materialise.

So, in the meantime, I've developed a terrible YouTube habit of watching Kermit the frog interviews about all sorts of Muppet films, DVDs and TV shows past and present, as well as a cafe bill that is close to the sum total of my meet-ee income, bar one meet-ee who pays me directly into my Czech account, which serves to slowly be allowing me to save up. A bit.

And I've taken to re-training myself in the area of shopping. Seeing as I now live right next to a shopping centre, which I have to walk past to get to the metro station, it is no longer viable to cry, weep, pout or otherwise feel sorry for myself in the face of hundreds of things I would love to have but cannot afford. So I have purposely been attempting over the last couple of weeks to constantly think of things I love, such as, red roses, books, magazines, iPads, posh knee-length boots, YSL red lipstick, Wine-coloured dark lipgloss, dresses found at random on Net-a-porter (my addiction of the future I predict), Côtes du Rhône red wine (or the Rosemount Shiraz/Cabernet wine when French wines are not available even in the local big supermarket because this is the Czech Republic), tight-fitting warm Victoria Beckham-range type dresses that go over black leggings and feather earrings/hairbands of all kinds of crazy colours, and flights and hotel stays in London, Paris, San Francisco or NYC and imagining myself having them. Some of which is possible, some of which is a stretch to even imagine being able to afford. (The flights to NYC in particular, though I know I could stay in a friend's flat if only, if only, if only I had the money to sublet her flat or give her almost the cost of the rent at either Christmas or in Spring and I've NEVER been to NYC at Christmas...)

Anyway, the upshot of all this fantasising is, I am learning to not wince in lack-of-funds thinking whenever I see a lovely soft jumper or gorgeous dress or sparkly big handbag, and instead imagine that one day I could indeed afford this stuff or even walk into the L'Occitane shop without feeling like I'll be singled out as working class scum, and thus unworthy, at first glance. And I am writing lists in my head of what I already have, which I am enormously grateful for: Macbook (hallelujah!) iPod (hurrah!) red, Kurt Geiger shoes (Kermit the frog-like "yay!") and Nokia slide phone that is reliable and still works, bless it (Gott sei dank) and all of this is helping. Bit by bit.

Here are the pictures I printed out of dresses I loved on Net-a-porter (and I purposely didn't look at the price) and stuck in my scrapbook:

Happy perusing. The cowboy has just come back armed with a bag of freshly picked (giant) mushrooms, so we're having salmon and mushrooms and spinach tonight which is not only a culinary experiment, it is an experiment in sharing the cooking duties. Hmm. Strange new worlds...

Mushroom picking and other preoccupations

It's been about a week now since I moved in with the cowboy and we're managing ok, but I'm beginning to develop a Jeff Goldblum-like twitch that becomes apparent everytime I get too much exposure to company and not enough time on my own.  I'm wondering whether this will gradually develop into a full-blown illness, much as Jeff Goldblum's character turned into a disgusting mesh of fly and human and I'll end up a gibbering wreck on the floor in about a month's time. It looks like I'm going to be here longer than the month I had hoped it would be limited to, because former meet-ees expected back in September have failed to materialise and new ones are few and far between and the writing work I've got pays so little for the amount of time it takes, it could take about a month before I earn a week's rent.

And in the meantime, I feel slightly more isolated than I did before, in a surreal world of Mums and babies because this area seems to be full of them, or at least the local shopping mall on the way to the metro (where the nearest shop is located) is. And it feels very disconcerting to be in the suburbs again, just like I was when I was growing up, having to accept yet again that I must do exactly the thing I don't want to do and hope that it's temporary. I hope there is a lesson in all this that I can learn just once and move on from, because otherwise this has been a series of years now of going to live in places I don't want to be (Prague) and doing things I don't want to do (have meetings with meet-ees) and not earning enough to get me out of here and onto something better (my whole earning life in a nutshell).

But I shall not dwell on this. The re-spinning of this whole experience would be: I'm now doing better paid work, I've actually got some ongoing paid writing work and I'm living rent-free with a boyfriend who's fairly easy-going. These are all pluses. Another plus would be, that one of the new skills I'm picking up here in the delightful Czech Republic has now stretched to identifying useful flora and fauna and indeed, fungi. You can't be a proper Czech if you don't have a good knowledge of which mushrooms you find in the countryside are good for eating and which will kill you. I have now got to 'mushroom picking 101' level by at least identifying viable edible mushrooms, but I couldn't tell you if they happen to have any close relatives that look very similar that might actually kill you. So, not quite Czech standard yet.

I was the first to spot the ripe hide of a huge mushroom in the field 

that started our search on Saturday. It looked like a giant toad from the angle I first caught it at, but then I realised it was a mushroom that was a little too old for eating, but by going over to inspect it, we actually stumbled upon younger, edible options, which was rather good. And the meadows that followed (aren't they pretty?)

yielded one or two more, 

along with lots of beautiful flowers and every so often, a sign showing the other wildlife we might be able to find here. From otters, to harvest mice, to vipers and little deer, I got to learn some useful names.

The harvest mice [myška drobná] in one of the other pictures looked so small and diddy that the cowboy decided this could be my nickname for the day.

We hadn't planned on picking mushrooms and we didn't have a paper bag to put them in, but we made do with tissues and a plastic bag and took them home relatively intact in order for them to then undergo the slicing and drying process that the cowboy always does. 

Once they are properly dried, they go in a jar and can be used at any point in the future to make a kind of mushroom sauce that goes rather well with chicken and rice, which I must admit, is rather a yummy specialty of the cowboy's now that I particularly look forward to.

Having spent this weekend away in the mountains, yet again, without internet access and without much opportunity to read or write things because we went by motorbike this time which limits the number of things we can bring with us, I feel a great need to stay in Prague this weekend. But the cowboy wants to go and see his brother in another part of the countryside on the other side of the Czech Republic.  I'm not sure I can do it. If nothing else, I need a break from weekends spent doing things according to his agenda and above all I need some time to myself. I think I'm going to have to look like the super bitch, horrid girlfriend he suspects I am, and just say no. In anycase, if I want to earn any money at all from this writing lark, I need to up my productivity, work all weekend and make sure I write about 10 articles in a week in order to hit the higher rate of pay allowed for anything over 8 articles from one Friday to the next. And with that, perhaps I should get going on the next one for them today.

Moving out, moving in, but moving on?

I made it.  I actually got all of my stuff out of my former flat, cleaned the whole flat on the Friday following the final box-exodus and even went to Šumava for the weekend, just to do what the cowboy wanted to do after a long period of him having to help me with tedious stuff.  But I'll have to make up for being utterly useless that weekend because I had period pain of epic proportions and had to stay in bed, drugged up to the eyeballs on painkillers just to survive, by going there again this weekend and being a good Czech-girlfriend substitute and going on a long walk in the mountains.  And then I'm done.  

Then, universe, let it be known, I need a big change.  I need enough income to flood in that I can realistically look for a new flat.  I need enough income to cover getting an iPad because I need access to publications and books without having to rely on the incompetent Czech postal system, which is fractionally worse than the UK postal system.  But only fractionally, and I've been away from the UK now for so long that in the meantime, for all I know, the UK postal system could have become even more incompetent.  Maybe there aren't Saturday deliveries anymore?  If there are, that's the one thing that makes the UK postal system that tiny bit better than it is here.  That's all.

On a lighter note, I've so far survived being in the depths of suburbia out of a sense of novelty, I suppose, although the cowboy is currently in his teenager mode of pointing out how this is what marriage is, boring and hum-drum and pointless.  And he's right.  If it's with someone you don't have enough in common with and if you live together in a flat you both don't particularly like.  But I never expected this to be anything but hum-drum and mildly, if not spectacularly, irritating for all concerned.

I know not to expect sweet little post-it notes left for me, nor random acts of kindness such as  a cup of tea brought to me on a day when I have to wake up early.  The cowboy seems not to appreciate things like this even when they do happen, though.  He didn't even see the little note I left stuck to the lock on the door yesterday.  Which is hard to believe.  But I guess he just shut the door behind him and didn't look in the direction of his hand as he was doing so.

I imagine this is exactly what marriage is like if you marry someone you don't love with a passion.  And it's clear that the cowboy and I have affection for each other, and even at times, a deep connection with regard to our backgrounds and the things we've been through but we don't have enough in common to enjoy each other's company for any great length of time, nor for day-to-day comings and goings.  

Here's a list of ways in which we do not match:

1) I hate watching TV without knowing what programme it is that I want to watch.  Most of it is rubbish anyway, and here it's rubbish dubbed into Czech, which has some small entertainment value and is fun when watching something like 'The Simpsons' but beyond that, I can totally do without the background drone of a TV.  The cowboy, however, always has the TV on.

2) I have two parts to my morning/breakfast routine.  First, a cup of tea and cereal.  Then, after showering and getting dressed, I like to have a cup of coffee and a croissant or pain au chocolat or just a yoghurt and fruit.  The coffee bit is essential though.  The cowboy scoffs down any breakfast all in one go, and doesn't like coffee.

3) I like reading.  Books, magazines, newspapers.  The cowboy hates reading anything except the National Geographic and a plethora of car magazines.

4) I like taking care of my own fitness routine and being disciplined about sticking to it, doing it on my own, in the privacy of my own home preferably.  The cowboy never gets round to planning an exercise routine, yet complains about having developed rather a big tummy and moans about the idea of going on walks in the woods on his own because, "people in the Czech Republic don't go for walks on their own."

5) I like to eat a few squares of a bar of chocolate in one go, then put it back in the fridge for another day.  The cowboy prefers to eat it all in one sitting, in big bites.

This does not bode well, obviously, for a future together.  

On the other hand, here are some important things we do have in common:

1) We both hate corruption and the politicians who make a living telling poor people they need to work harder, while keeping quiet about the bribe they just took.

2) We both know what it's like to grow up in scuzzy working class / communist (very similar, believe me) accommodation with thin walls you can hear everything through, eating cheap food that has never come across the word Mediterranean or, in my case even, 'garlic'. 

3) We both like action films for a laugh and a bit of welcome distraction from the bureaucracy of day-to-day living.

4) We both have an innate perception of others and sensitivity to people's feelings to the point of being able to predict what they're thinking.  We both also need to be careful not to take this too far and start telling people what they think, because that's robbing people of their own opinion.  (I'm working hard to get rid of this bad habit.  The cowboy is not.)

5) We both like nature documentaries.  Especially ones about the wildlife in parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.

So, there you have it.  Is that a relationship?  Of sorts, I suppose.  Isn't it statistically researched that men benefit more from marriage and/or cohabitation than women?  So why is the cowboy moaning about how bad this temporary set-up is?  Especially as I've just done the washing up.  Again.