Single Person Behaviour (Part Deux)

I'm so thrilled at having this time to myself I can't get over how wonderful it is!  I therefore had to create a second part to my previous post. I had a somewhat unfortunate start to the day in that I was woken up by period pain, even though that shouldn't be happening for at least another 5 days so I had to take some painkillers right away but that kind of gave me a good excuse to have a longer lie-in as compensation. Snuggling up with a hot water bottle always feels cosy even when the reason for making a hot water bottle was the pain that came unexpectedly. I am so lucky that I kept a good lot of magazines out and in bags instead of boxes because that means I've been able to plaster the bed with them and browse, read and lounge about looking at pictures avidly. I'm feeling a bit mournful about all the lovely old copies of Vogue I had to get rid of before I even moved to this country though because I had some great ones, mostly bought for half-price at the second-hand exchange bookshop on Notting Hill on Pembridge Road. Oh how I miss that shop...But I did keep a whole bunch of pages from my favourite editions including a few Paris Vogues, and I'm glad I've had a chance to look through those. Nothing like covering the bed with fashion pictures and mini-articles (zoom in on the middle left of the photo) on people like Daniel Auteuil.

I have also continued my practising of new make-up techniques after educating myself that it's not entirely about the make-up you buy but how you use it, thanks to this Lisa Eldridge video in particular. But I amazingly found that I already had one of the lipsticks she mentioned - the 'New Black' no17 one! Which is exactly the dark shade I most wanted - yay! I vainly took a few pictures of myself (how shameful is that?) using PhotoBooth on my Mac (Macs are just so brilliantly full of useful and totally free software!) sporting that very dark red/mauve lipstick. This is where it gets tricky to remain anonymous and show the fruits of my labour...

(Well, it wasn't exactly labour. There are tonnes of other things I've done that are far more creative and took wayyy more work but that I really can't share here as it would indeed be too much of a giveaway. Though I'm pretty sure at this stage the only people reading this are people who know me anyway. (Leave a comment and prove me wrong if that's not the case!) 

I enjoyed my lie-in today and I made a terribly unhealthy cooked breakfast (but not exactly a totally English cooked breakfast) of eggs, baked beans, mushrooms and Czech spicy sausages, with a mug of coffee. It was rather yummy. And I can't tell you how delightful it was to realise there's so much less washing up to do even after making something as messy as a cooked breakfast when there's only one person's washing up to do! Wow - it only took about 15 minutes!

The other thing I have been doing is trying for the life of me to come up with a good present for my sister's birthday. It's the big 'three - oh' and I want to get her something special, but anything good and something I'd feel pleased as punch to get her is out of my price range and is something I've failed to get for myself and yet have always wanted. Such as a proper silk camisole or chemise like this or a sumptuously sparkly handbag like this. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be able to a) make her proud of me that I can actually afford to buy her something really special for once and b) if I'll ever be able to have any of these things myself. I suppose while even copies of Vogue are out of my price range, I have an amazon wishlist that I still can't even afford to get any of, and I've declined to buy ice-cream this weekend because I couldn't afford that as well as a bottle of wine and salmon, I can safely assume the answer may well be 'no'. I really want to turn this around. My sister deserves some luxury for once.

She is the epitome of the brilliant bargain-hunter where I aspire to be more Parisian and spend a lot on something that will truly last and do me well for being better quality (but usually I can only manage this by buying it when it's already 10 years old from a charity shop) so she has a revolving list of items in her wardrobe that she gets rid of on a regular basis because she buys from Primark, H&M and Kohls. She's got it down to a fine art to get my Mum or Dad to buy things for her while she's seen that they're on sale and has built up a remarkable range of clothes on this basis. I just wish I could treat her to something she would never want to replace.

Heigh-ho. Time for some more old pages from Vogue perusing (and in this pile is one of the pages of photos that inspired my main music pic for social media and google use for my music work at the moment. I had such fun working with the Russian Countess on that shoot - I wonder if you can guess which one...)

and a huge amount of denial about the fact that tomorrow the Cowboy is coming back and tonight I have to deal with a meet-ee on Skype and that that damned expensive festivity - Christmas - is not far off and I'm possibly more broke than when I first started out as a student. I'll find a way to get through it somehow but I just wish I could at least be doing it all on my own, in a flat of my own, with my keyboard set-up in a space befitting it and enough money to buy myself at least one treat, if nothing else, as a means of celebrating getting so much done on my websites all by myself from working out stuff from free training videos.

Period pain and other issues

I made it back from the trip to the south, but I haven't felt entirely rested from the experience.  Not least because it was about 60% good, 40% an out-and-out battle to prove myself compatible and acceptable for such a holiday.  So I didn't write for a while.  I then experienced the 'back down to earth' post-hoilday 'bump' that you feel when you have to get back to normal, tedious life.  I got caught up with a few personal 'issues' and now I'm languishing in bed with period pain.  

Having watched 'No Strings Attached' recently, I can attest that the best line in it, which is so appropriate right now, was the moment a friend who was having her period said, "it's like a crime scene in my pants", while she bites into a red velvet cupcake.  (Red velvet cupcakes happen to be my all-time favourite, though it is distasteful that I have been won-over by something so 'de rigeur' and trendy among bored Americans.  It's not very me, somehow.)  It's funny how this line is so much ruder, but more accurate in British English.  But we're always saying shocking things like 'toilet' instead of 'bathroom', or indeed, my personal favourite for its sheer euphemism, 'restroom'.  (If they start putting chaises-longues in public toilets I could be persuaded otherwise, but until such time...not convinced, sorry.)

I'm not sure why silly Hollywood rom-coms appeal to me so much at the moment.  Maybe it's because I've been analysing things so much lately and I need something that will help me to switch off my brain.  Except if it's a half-decent rom-com at all, it still has something to trigger little thoughts and questions in my head anyway.  And some of them only re-iterrate to me the pressures and expectations of society that I am falling foul of.  But I cannot change that.  I cannot become normal. 

It must be so settling to have hit all those expected 'targets'.  Career, stable and loving relationship, children etc.  I don't know how anyone ever manages even one of those.  I would be quite happy just to achieve the first, but that's where I've gone wrong and I suppose that impacts on the other possibilities and systematically rules them out.  Though it occurs to me that this is something that men have to get right in a way that women needn't.  And I have to take responsibility for that and acknowledge that this double-standard exists.  It's not fair that if men don't get a good job, a good career (though it may be easier for them to attain than women, but that's a whole other issue) they will most certainly not get the other things.  They'd better not hope for the other things at all unless they get the first.  Whereas women seem to think (or at least a lot of them do, especially in this somewhat behind the times, influenced by communism country) that there's still hope for them even if they don't get a good job, let alone career, that some man will come along and take care of all that financial stuff for them.  Their successful future is dependent on it.  And that just saddens me.  It really does.

And what saddens me more, is that there is one really good man out there and I think you can guess who I mean without any reference, who is losing out, even though he's finally decided he does want children, because he's got a good job but not an excellent one and it has few prospects for promotion and his current girlfriend is a total loser who has absolutely no money, wants to do something creative as a career but has no hope of it, and for that reason and many, many more, never wants to have children.  Someone please rescue him.  I wish I could do a deal with god and get him the well-paid, properly appreciated work he deserves and a girlfriend who's achieved enough and is happy and brave enough to have children, and who will make him happy.  It can't be me.  And I'm so sorry about that.  I'd do that deal in a heart-beat, even if it meant taking my own life in return, because there are too many unhappy people around who just aren't getting what they deserve and it makes me very angry indeed.  And that's not just the hormones talking, I promise.