Make it so!

My brain won't let me escape the things that are lacking in my life.  It either forces me to dream of things I wish I had or things I have already lost for good.  Last night it was more of a rubbing in my face of the things that maybe 50% of my friends/people I know have, but I haven't got anywhere near.  I know it's probably partly hormones kicking in at this point, trying to purposely make me feel worse, but nonetheless, it's there in the back of my mind like an old photograph sitting on a shelf depicting a prosperous time, while the photo frame itself resides in a messy, financially deprived kind of place.  

I'm building up a list of things that I not only want, but need and it's getting longer all the time, for the lack of funding to be able to re-buy things that wear out.  My main handbag has been falling apart at the seams for years now, though I have sewn up the bits that were sewable.  My wallet is doing the same thing.  I have of course seen delightful examples of wallets and bags (well just two in particular actually) that I very much wish I could afford to replace my old ones with, but I can't stretch to getting them at the moment.  And perhaps the bigger problem is it's me that's worn out.

I'm tired of burning the candle at both ends for work I neither enjoy nor provides me with enough money to truly live.  I am tired of having to have people come into my flat to have meetings that involve so much preparation.  I'm tired of not being able to have decent food available to sustain me from the local supermarket, because it's too small to stock the right things and because it's the Czech Republic and they DON'T DO 'healthy food'.  I'm tired of knowing I have to curtail my efforts in a relationship that will not give me back as much as I am capable of giving.  I'm tired of struggling and not enjoying my day-to-day existence.  I'm tired of having lots of things I can do, but not being able to do them because I don't get paid for them.

I read something on the lovely Belgian Waffling blog the other day that described how her children deal with these dark, miserable, tiring winter days and I wish I could be more like them.  Apparently, they:

"get home, put their pyjamas on, make themselves a selection of snacks and sit under a duvet on the sofa, refusing to do anything".

Hmm.  What a fantastic idea.  I want a day to do that.  A whole day.  When I don't have to do ANYTHING.  Not doing a pile of washing (a typical 'day off' cheat), not going to Tesco to get food, not accounting, not meeting anyone, not emailing anyone, not answering the phone, not dealing with admin issues, not trying to sort out internet banking nonsense, not plugging in to anything except my computer to watch DVDs on.  And not being woken up at 8.15am by builders drilling into the wall behind my head on a day when I unexpectedly had the opportunity for a lie-in.  

That last one would really help enormously.

I need to become Patrick Stewart and declare: "Make it so!" in a suitably convincing and authoritative way that makes things obey me.

Make it so!

Monday Musings

Going away for the weekend does seem to wreak havoc with my capacity to keep up with ,blogeček'.  Not only is it impossible to write over the weekend, but I can't even write on Friday, due to the necessity to work (and plan work) like the clappers from 8am till about 7pm in order to have a weekend free in the first place.  This is of course, ever more tragic, in light of the fact that I had a spare hour or so this morning to go and get some food to replenish my empty fridge with, but the local Tesco is so useless, I had to go again in the afternoon to the big one in Anděl.  Not only that, but then even the big one still didn't have about three main things I needed (for a healthy and varied diet) nor about three other things I can hang on for but would have liked to have got in one go.

Bloody shopping.  I hate it.  That's today's problem in a nutshell.  ,,V kostce", as they say here.  And it gets worse.  Last night, I dreamt about buying a new bag and then finding that it came with a brilliantly reduced, sale-price wallet.  I think my brain has finally lost it.  I mean, who the hell dreams about shopping?!!  And for a bag and a purse?  Heaven help me.  Seriously.  I know I still mourn the loss of my oh-so-delightful fake green leather wallet, that I could quickly pop under my arm whenever I needed to have my hands free, which cheered me up unfathomably, but that purse is long gone.  As is my capacity to buy anything nice.

Maybe that's what it is.  The knowledge that all this recent flat-out work leaves me unable to buy anything delightful and frivolous, or even nice-but-practical.  I had to dip into "birthday money" just to get a magazine and some blank CDs.  ,,Ach jo..."  (This is a common Czech expression meaning, "oh well", which is followed up with a sigh and a sort of 'resigned to despair' kind of look.)

This wasn't how my return to blogeček was supposed to turn out.  I was meant to be revealing the details of my weekend.  Not all of the details, such as my musings on what the hell being in love is anyway, and am I not merely mistaking it for a hormonal imbalance of some kind, but just the ones I have photographic evidence of.  Which is merely, walking up a big hill, known affectionately as a mountain here.  How high does a big hill have to be, before it qualifies as a mountain?  I just don't believe that it is possible I climbed up a mountain this Saturday.  It simply cannot be linguistically accurate in English, even if the Czechs say 'byli jsme na výlet, na horách" all the time.

Anyway, this was the view of other ,,hory" (mountains) from the one I walked up:

And this was the view of the receding sunlight over a hill at the bottom of Milešovka, on the walk back to the car:

And lo and behold, with this, my precious free time is nearly up and I must away...my apologies for such a confused and almost deliriously tired entry today.  But then, I did climb a mountain at the weekend.  That's got to count for something.