Happy Weekend!

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Well the weekend is almost over for me, but happy weekend to those of you in other parts of the world with a few more hours left.

This weekend was really fun.  On Friday I met Adam and a friend in town after work.  We had dinner at a great cheap and cheerful Malaysian place.  After that we went to a fancy beer bar in town where they have a ridiculous amount of imported beers.  Adam was incredibly excited.

Then on Saturday we slept in and then headed to a friends wedding in the city.  I really love weddings, and this one was beautiful, held in an old museum hall.  The reception was lots of fun, great food and wine and lots of people I hadn't seen for a while.  We have both been really reclusive for the past few months, and I'm been avoiding social situations like the plague, but this went better than I expected and I had a great time.  I also had a few glasses of wine, which probably made things seem less awkward than they would have been otherwise.

Today I've spent the whole day in my jarmies. We watched a documentary about identical twins.  I did some internetting.  I'm not ready to go to work tomorrow, but on the plus side I only have two days of work this week and the we are off to Sydney for two weeks!  Hooray!  I can't wait.

I have lots of jobs to do before we leave for Auckland on Wednesday and I probably won't have time for blogging or commenting until I get back.  We are not taking the laptop overseas in case it gets stolen so will be relying on hotel computer access. This has all become so much a part of my life over the past few months (particularly reading and commenting) that it's going to be strange not going through my daily routine.    But also I think it might be good to have a break from the internet for a while.  I think that it might have something to do with my increasing social anxiety and withdrawal from the world.  I feel no need to even turn my cell phone on anymore, because I just don't care.  I am getting all my need for social contact from Adam,  my work colleagues, and bloggers.  There is something not good about that, to feel like I don't need (or want) to participate in the real world anymore.


One more thing on a brighter note:  this week we watched Young Frankenstein, which you haven't seen you definitely should.  Since then I may have watched this scene about 50 times.  It's so funny it makes me cry with laughter:



Have a fantastic week everyone! 

I'm not ready

It's getting cold again, and it's too early.
We had a miserable excuse for a summer here, with only about 6 weeks of intermittent warmth and sunshine.  At least that's what it felt like.
And now, the cold has returned.

I need some nourishment today.  I want hot tea and coffee, a warm bed, an open fire, warm porridge with milk and brown sugar, toast with jam, socks, a good book, hot whiskey and lemon.

 

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I also took a completely illegitimate and undeserved  sick day. I'm in bed with a hot water bottle and I'm going to take advantage of the fact that Adam is at work by watching a shameless chick flick in all it's glory.

Also, here is a song I really love. It's a Radiohead cover by Gillian Welch.  I loves me a bit of alt-country.

I'm Sick

I'm sick, and haven't been around for a while. I have this auto-immune disease that I thought I was well rid of, that has come back with a vengeance. My hands and feet are swollen and sore, my bones ache, I'm exhausted for no reason. I've been worrying that maybe my toenails may pop right off.

Last week I had a bit of a cry because I thought something was seriously wrong, like kidney or liver failure. The doctor said it was unlikely, but possible and ran some tests. I hate this so much. I don't like being sick, and even more I hate obsessing about what awful things could be happening to my body.

I love the internet but one thing it is not good at is reassuring you that you are going to be ok when you enter your symptoms in diagnose-me.com or whatever ("your symptoms indicate you have.......Ebola"). It just fuels my anxiety. I need to just stop it.

I'm such a drama queen most of the time anyway that when I am sick I feel very sorry for myself and pull the whole dying swan routine. This morning, walking to the bathroom , my feet were hurting and I thought to myself "I'm just like The Little Mermaid!" and had a little sob. Seriously how much more self-pitying can you get than that!

Speaking of The Little Mermaid, look at these stunning illustrations by Sulamith Wulfing:

All images from this tribute site.

Interestingly enough, my all time favourite, Stevie Nicks, found inspiration in these paintings and then created the cover art for this album. Funny how you see something and it resonates with you and then realise that it's connected to another thing that really resonates with you.

Anyway this was meant to be a post about MY sickness and now it's ended up being about art and Stevie Nicks. Go figure. Anyway I'm going to the post office now to do some chores and try and cheer myself up.

Here's a clip from that album:

Word of the Day - Jeepers!

Holy mackerel it's been an intense day. Work, which has been quiet for ages in now suddenly chaotic and busy. I spent most of the day trying to keep people from punching each other and dealing with families. It's busy and hard work, but really invigorating and rewarding most of the time.

This week we've watched more Woody Allen films, went out for Indian and drank a lot of wine (nothing new there). Tonight we're going to finish watching Desconstructing Harry and make some mix cds for a friend. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. We're going to spend time with some friends and sleep in.

I'm in a really buoyant mood today, so with that in mind here's another song from these guys. I was actually waitressing at the venue when this video was shot, at a great live music venue called Cabaret (now closed down). And yes, that is Bret McKenzie.

Possessions and Lies

A while ago Chantelle wrote this post about being frugal and refusing to buy non-essentials throughout the month of February. It got me thinking about not buying in to the whole consumerism thing in general. Not just with actions but with my thinking. Then on the weekend I watched a few documentaries about hoarding as a real social problem and started making some connections for myself between the two.

The whole hoarding thing is like watching a car crash. It's really horrible and you feel bad for the people involved, but at the same time it's morbidly fascinating. Anyway I was looking at this site about this poor guy who has just bought endless piles of stuff. I know that there is a mental disorder involved, but something about his need to OWN things really hit home with me.

You know I get heaps of blog posts in my reader each day that have clothes and makeup and furniture and all these other material possessions and I find myself coveting them, and it just seems really wrong. And then when I watched that film I just felt like I was just like them, getting sucked into some false consciousness that if only I could OWN that thing it would make me feel better, more accomplished, that I had arrived, that I was safe.

Don't get me wrong, I love the pretty things in life and wish for certain things and I think that's normal and ok. But only to a point. I've been obsessing about a nail polish for about 3 months now that you can't get in NZ and honestly, I think about it every day. A NAIL POLISH for goodness sake. That's not normal thinking!

There is some part of me that thinks this whole hoarding thing is consumerism on steroids. Corporations want you to buy things so they can make money. They sell you a lie that if you buy a certain product it makes a statement about who you are, and effects how others think of you. The reality is that that is a totally corrupt falsehood - but it's been repeated so often, so much that it has become a social truth. And we are all getting sucked in. Even the 'bohemians' among us.

The whole beauty industry, for example, is all just a corrupt ploy by corporations to make people feel ugly and fat so they can buy a product that "saves" them from themselves. The whole thing is false, but now it's so entrenched in our society that if you see someone who isn't wearing makeup to hide their flaws you feel disdain for them. Even the people that invented that lie in the first place have to conform, or else they are marginalized. I don't even go to the supermarket without putting concealer on anymore - what am I afraid of? That the checkout operator or the guy buying steak are going to look at me and think I'm ugly and therefore a bad person? And tell people they know? There is something seriously, seriously warped about that.

Surely I'm not the only person who feels like this?

Anyway, apologies for the rant. Here's the clip:

Things that saved my sanity this week

Adam and I have been quarantined in our room all week with sickness and it almost drove us mad. We did lots of laying around and complaining, but it's actually been a pretty cool week.

I got lost on the interwebs and found lots of great stuff:

Hoardhouse - a site exploring the issue of compulsive hoarding in New York was really interesting and sad.

We listened to some epidodes of This American Life, a first for me.

We listened to the lullaby renditions of popular rock bands on this site, and got baby envy.

In the real world we watched these movies:

Continuing our quest to watch every Hitchcock film ever made

Because I've never seen a Woody Allen movie. This was so great

This movie was amazing. More on this later.

We also went to the second hand bookstore and stocked up, returned to vegetarianism and went to an outdoor music festival to celebrate Bob Marley's birthday. And I don't even like reggae.

Also these guys have been making me happy this week. They are just another reason why living in Wellington is so great.

Happy weekend everyone!

Going West

I'm so glad I accidentally found this clip today, which features one of my favourite books of all time, Going West by Maurice Gee.

I first read this book as a teenager, living in West Auckland (where parts of the book are based). The darkness of the story was somehow lost on me until I read it over and over again as an adult. The fact it's set in West Auckland (where I grew up and lived as a child) and in Wellington (where I live as an adult) thrills me as familiar streets and walkways are named and described. I can picture each address, visually tour every winding Wellington street and steep, steep stairway. The darkness of humanity described is deep and heavily layered. The characters allow themselves to be transparent in their brokenness, but the truly disturbing unsettling depths of their iniquity is kept hidden and cloaked.