Sunday 27 July 2014

Gypsy goes a-roamin

I've moved on, for good or bad, to Wordpress. Find me at The Snoring Dog.  It's such fun!

Sunday 5 February 2012

Dating

I'm not ready for a new relationship, I won't be for some time, if ever at all.  The pain of betrayal still courses through me, my ability to trust has evaporated, my love for the one who hurt me is depressingly strong.  I'm bored though.  Losing a big chunk of your life, that special somebody who you spent so much time with, devoted so many thoughts to, leaves you feeling empty and alone.  The weekends don't mean that much at the moment and I use them to catch up with sleep, to clear my head of the fuzziness that's been induced by knocking back a bottle of wine on a Friday and Saturday night.  A distraction would be most welcome.  A friend, a bit of company to share crappy thoughts with, hang out with, have a laugh with.

Probably against my better judgement, I've signed up to a couple of dating websites in order to see if there's anybody out there in a similar position to me.  Somebody who's not after a relationship, but just needs a bit of a leg up to get back on track.  

Oh.  Deary.  Me.

The problem with being a gay woman is gay women.  Most of them are screwed up because of being screwed over by other women, who I am convinced are the most evil, conniving and dangerous creatures on the planet.  You see I'm not starting out from a good position here.  Taking a quick look through the photos and profiles of available ladies, for want of a better term, on the websites such as Match or Plenty of Fish, it's obvious that they fall into a number of categories:

  1. Bull dykes who I wouldn't want to touch with a bargepole - overweight video game addicts with cropped hair, vest tops, tattoos, piercings, issues
  2. Athletic and toned fitness freaks who wear very tight tops to show off their figures.  These women are scary and probably never sit still long enough to have anything like a normal conversation with.
  3. Pretty ladies who like pretty ladies
  4. Straight couples after a threesome
  5. Women who pose holding a glass of wine, or beer who can't string a written sentence together and whose favourite activities include "hang in' out wiv me mates, drinkin', clubs, gettin' pissed, lol"(a high proportion of these also fit into category 1)
  6. Politicos
  7. Mud-covered festival addicts who probably never wash
  8. Women wearing stetsons
  9. Women with children
  10. Darling transexuals who want women to share makeup hints with and share their shoes and handbags
  11. Women whose faces are obscured because they've taken the photo using a mobile phone to capture their image in a mirror.  I mean, come on!  How difficult can it be?
And there's me.  I just want the the company of a woman who's a woman, not a woman who's trying to be a man.  Somebody who's interesting in the few things that I'm interested in.  Somebody who can help me fold the bedding when it comes out of the tumble dryer.

You'd think that working where I work, where there's an astonishingly high proportion of gays and lesbians, I'd have no problem meeting somebody and allowing my natural wit and charm to melt somebody's heart.   Perhaps people are put off by my addiction to knitwear.

It's OK that I'm mostly OK with being alone at the moment.  I think I'm better off that way, given my history with women anyway.  With the spring (I'm sure it'll come), I have projects to undertake around the house. More to the point I have a big project to undertake with myself.  Being very fragile emotionally still, I don't need any distractions from getting myself better.  I also need to get myself fitter physically.  And find a hairdresser.

I'm safer hanging out with my gay friends who are in couples and straight friends who just like me for who I am.  The women can be put on the back burner for now.  Or burnt at the stake for all I care. 


Art
I am a philistine.  I know nothing of art and have no interest in it (add to the list "I like spending time at the theatre and at art galleries" - no, just no), however, I do need a little bit of colour in my little house, so I've acquired a few prints to stick around the place.

This lady is one of Picasso's.  She lives in the Sainsbury Centre for Art in Norwich and you can't actually buy her as a print (Lord only knows why!), but I scanned her from a postcard and got Photobox to do the rest.

That frame that she's in has got to have the tightest-fitting insets known to man.  I sliced my finger trying to get it all together again.  Fucking thing.

Staying with the Picasso thing, this little piece is rally rather jolly:


The frame mount isn't the right size, so there's a chunk of the image obscured, but Cat and Crab on the Beach will look very at home on my chimney breast once the correct mount is in situ.

And finally, who doesn't love a little Kandinsky?


Apparently all those lines and circles signify something very clever and musical/mathematical/philosophical, but I just like the colours.

While I was impressed with the latter two frames that I bought from Ikea, I was less than impressed with my directional skills getting to and going around the store.  Without fail,  I get lost getting there and getting around there, but at least I won't need to visit there again for another couple of years.


Could it be the weather?
It snowed for the first time this winter yesterday.  We'd known it was coming all week.  There was about 10cm of it in total.  It caused absolute havoc.  Why is this?  Even when we're prepared for it, we're hopelessly unprepared for it.

And people who drive in it are generally pathetic and shouldn't be allowed on the road.  I was trying to get to a party last night, but got stuck behind a load of numpties trying to get up the hill who simply didn't know how to drive in the conditions (and BMWs that simply cannot drive in those conditions).  Realising that the scenario would be repeated throughout my journey to the darker reaches of Old Trafford, I gave up.  

Most motorists who get stranded in snowy conditions are either shit drivers, BMW drivers, or the poor bastards who get trapped behind them.


Saturday 28 January 2012

Addicted to crap

Despite really appreciating good food and fine dining experiences, despite loving dabbling in the kitchen, despite turning my nose up at people who stuff their shopping trollies with overpriced, crap ready meals, I love crap food.

I have an addiction problem, I think; I easily get hooked on things, be they hobbies (check out how much I blogged when I first started), booze, cigarettes, prescription drugs, people, the internet.  The one that's niggling at me at the moment is crap food.  I love it.

If it's never seen anything green, I'll eat it.  Salty snacks, salty spicy snacks, takeaway food, even Subway sandwiches: I can eat them until they come out of my nose.

I have a constant hankering after burritos.  But in a toss up with hot and sour soup and salt and pepper spare ribs, I'm not sure which I'd choose.  And then there are nachos, with all that lovely salsa and the jalapeƱos and the cheese and refried beans.  Who wouldn't like that?  An idiot, that's who.

My current agenda for indulgence in crap includes sourcing a hotdog very soon.  A foot long hot dog with onions, mustard and ketchup.  Such a heavenly combination of reclaimed pig and fat and relish, it's never far away from my thoughts.

Since having an excellent burrito in Las Vegas - oh, I'm so cosmopolitan - last time I went - I've been more than once, even more cosmopolitan - I have a yearning for the spicy Mexican snack on at least a weekly basis.  The flavours and textures of beef, beans rice and chilli dance in your mouth while the heat courses through from the first interactions with tastebuds right to the tips of the toes.

Yes, a lovely mixed green salad with avocado, fine olive oil and a dash of lemon juice is divine, the combination of seasonal beef tomatoes with mild salad onions and herbs accompanying grilled sardines can make my heart sing, but it's the crap that really satisfies.

My parents are to blame of course, Mother in particular.  We ate proper meals as we grew up and "crap tea" was so rare that Mum never really got the hang of it.  Despite her being an excellent cook who provided us with delicious meals from around the world, she couldn't do crap tea: her chips were a disaster (fat not hot enough) and her sausages were bland, so when the rare opportunity arose for proper chippy tea, it was such an experience that always left me wanting more.  The cooking fat was at the perfect temperature, the chips heavenly and if curry sauce or gravy was included, it made me the happiest kid alive.

Maybe I'm no different that most people in that I like a treat occasionally.  I rarely act on my desire for pizza, chips, kebabs, hotdogs, burritos, curry, hot and sour soup for fuck's sake, but my mind has been trained to always hanker after these things instead of well, what are their polar opposites:


  • Vegetables - boring, just totally boring to the point of them being not food
  • Brown rice - Jesus wept, this is a punishment, not a food
  • Edamame beans - can't even pronounce the bloody word
  • Soya - ick
  • Skinless chicken - just what's the point?  Really??

Anyway (:@) I'm supposed to be going for a burrito tomorrow.  I'd love to prepare nachos for tea, but a whole portion is too much even for me.

And that's the thing about being alone, it's difficult to find the motivation to prepare a load of nachos, let alone cook a proper meal.  But I'm getting there, always hopeful of a summer that will put me in the mood for that green salad and those sardines.  In the meantime though, I'll keep on dreaming of, and resisting, the crap - apart from tomorrow of course.


Exercise
I returned to the gym last night.  I'd already decided on a gently reintroduction since my lungs are a bit shit at the moment and all that.  I didn't bank on my session being cut short by an unruly contact lens that left me with the sensation of having a pin stuck in my eyeball.  Is it just me?

Sunday 22 January 2012

It's gettin' better

Being on antidepressants is annoying.  I'm finding it increasingly difficult to mope around the house in silence.  Even when I'm happy, this is one of my favourite activities, but these days, I find myself doing things like watching the TV.  I've even stopped watching Air Crash Investigation because I'm not feeling so morbid, but it's a great programme!  I've been watching drama, getting obsessed with the BBC's  Sherlock and only tutting 5 times during an episode of Casualty instead of every two minutes.

I'm not happy.  I rely on my cynicism and nastiness to get through life and now it's going.  I'm even making plans for this:



Which, up to a couple of weeks ago, looked like this:



There will be flowers and colour.

Of course, my optimism for sunshine is generally cut down to size by living in the rainiest, God awful shithole on the planet, so the chances of being suicidal again by then of August are high.  For now though, I'm looking forward to making plans for my little spot in the sunshine.


Cooking is bad for my naturally calm demeanour
Well, cooking things in my oven is.  It's nice and new and clean and it's barely been used, and cooking in it makes it utterly disgusting and smelly.  There's some belly pork in there at the moment, spitting fat all over the lovely clean interior.  Is the crackling worth it?  You fucking betcha!

It always seems a bit miserable, cooking for yourself.  I'd much rather be doing this to share with somebody special, but my somebody special fucked off with her ex and has consigned herself to a future of Happy Meals instead of proper food.  Their loss, not mine.  Maybe I should see myself as being special and worth it, but it's difficult.

This little diamond of a book has recently come back into my possession after a gap of 20 years.  I'm looking forward to making lots of mess with the recipes it contains.



Lunch with my family
My family met up for a meal yesterday at a pretty nice pub/restaurant. The setting is pleasant and the food is great.  It's the sort of place with open fires and things.  And so the conversation for the two hours was decided: fire.  All fucking afternoon, all they did was go on about the open fucking fire.  It's like they'd never seen flames before.  They all came close to getting stabbed in the head with a fork.

Ug, fire



Sunday 15 January 2012

Pudding

The little dog has it rough in the winter.  His walks are usually restricted to a forty minute pull into the village, with a bit of shouting at shadows the lurk in the darkness.  It's not fun for anybody, but it gives him the chance to have a sniff around, leave a few wee-mails and get as much mud on his paws as possible.

During the summertime and during winter weekends, however, he gets to run off-lead at the local woods. He meets his friends there, sometimes meets the odd weirdo who walks dogless, chases rabbits when he can bothered, rolls in fox poo.  You get to see the same dogs, which is quite nice.  And there's one particular one - a little black one - called "Pudding".  What a great name.  The next dog I have is going to be called sausage.


The butcher of Chesterfield
I used to get my hair cut at a proper salon in Chesterfield.  Sandy, my hairdresser, was lovely, but like most hairdressers, she never listened to a fucking word I said to her about how I wanted my hair to look.

What's wrong with these people?  If I want to look like I did when I was an 18 year old nerdy geek just starting out at university, that is how I want you to cut my fucking hair.  I'm paying you to do as I want, not as you want.  It got to the stage where the best thing about going there was the head massage while the girl was applying the conditioner, the rest of it was just trauma, followed by six week weeks of resentment.

And then there was the bloody conversation that you had to force yourself to endure while she was snipping away at the wrong bits of my thatch.  After attempting to fully engage in conversation for the first year or so, it got to the stage where I just gave up, certain that she must know the answers to her questions before asking them:

"Are you going out tonight?"

"No"

"Oh, I don't think I'm going out tonight, but I'll just stay in and watch Take me out - do you watch that?"

"No"

Anyway, for a number of reasons, I won't be seeing Sandy again.  I'd considered giving "Hair by Thomasina" a go - she's just a few doors down from where I live, but I figured the smells wafting in from the neighbouring chippy might be a little off-putting.  And there's the whole thing of striking up conversations with people who know where you live... which happens to be the house where her daughter used to live before it got repossessed.  The potential resentment from her should she discover this, is just too much of a risk to take; not so much with my hair do, which I'm not particularly precious about, more with having a pair of scissors inserted up my nose.

So, the upshot of this tale is that I let my sister cut my hair last night.  It's actually what I've been wanting for a while, give or take the mullet potential in a few weeks.  Little Con gave me a special sticker for being brave while she snipped away at me.  My sister had cut Con's fringe that night and so the little girl knew the fear I was experiencing first hand.


Back in the kitchen
After not eating for a few weeks, and certainly not cooking anything, I've started to venture back in there. It's not a huge amount of fun when you've nobody to share it with, even vicariously, but it's one step towards getting better.  Unless I don't cook chicken for long enough in which case I'll spend a few days doubled up in agony, but c'est la vie!

Saturday 14 January 2012

Landslide

Things are bad again, and they'll probably be bad for some time.  Life will go on, the sun will shine again - not where I live because it's a rainy shithole - but it will shine and I'll feel its warmth... for maybe an hour or so.  And then I'll curse the dodgy air conditioning system in my car instead of cursing my miserable life.  Once I can start cursing dodgy air conditioning systems, however, I'll know that I'm OK again.

When things go against you, it's difficult not to blame yourself, to see yourself as worthless, one who others think it's OK to cast off and throw away.  Invariably though, it's them.  I just need to avoid people who turn out to be "them" and find those who are decent and honest and faithful I guess.


Medication's what you need
I'm currently on the same combination of drugs that Kerry Katona had after her split with Brian McFadden.   I'm not sure that's true, but antidepressants and sleeping tablets have had the strangest effects on me.  Mercifully, one of them was suppressing my appetite, which can never be a bad thing with a greedy guzzler.  The vivid dreams and restless nights are back though, and I find myself waking up exhausted with an aching jaw and temples from grinding my teeth while I do sleep.

I was prescribed some amazing sleeping tablets by my GP - Zopiclone/Zimovane, or whatever.  Being a geeky nerd, and not being provided with the pills without an information leaflet, I wikid them.  "Can cause sleep walking, sleep eating and sleep driving" and no end of paranoia to boot.  I have to hide my car keys when I think I might take one, but pyjamas aside, I doubt anybody would notice any difference in my driving skills anyway.

They're great though: hide car keys, lock door, do your bathroom stuff, get comfortable in bed, take tablet, wait.  And you wait a few minutes, wait for the drowsiness, but nothing, then beautiful blackness and you're gone.  You wake up feeling like shit and you can't stand up, but you do sleep with them.

Apart from making me feel like I was being hunted by a pack of wolves for the first few days, the antidepressants are OK.  They might be working, who knows?  I feel like shit for so many reasons that any person who doesn't suffer from depression would really struggle with, but they can't be doing any harm... sleepless nights and jaw ache aside.


Rocky and the phantom blackbirds
The little dog has issues with so many things, his latest being blackbirds in the ivy that covers the fence between mine and the neighbours' house.  He's taken to launching himself at the fence and fighting with the ivy because he thinks it's all part of a wider blackbird conspiracy.  I tried to reassure him that it was just leaves by picking him up and showing him.   At that very moment, an amorous couple of the tweeters, decided to descend onto the fence and their tussle made them fall into the yard in front of us.

My dog is very strong.

But he can't fly.

The blackbirds survived again.  As they will forever.


Air crash investigation
What a wonderful TV programme.  It makes me want to work for the NTSB.  But, also being an avid fan of Nothing to Declare,  I want to work for Australian Customs and Immigration.

Maybe I could job share: one day fining people for daring to bring a banana into Australia; the next day piecing together evidence from air disasters, using dry wipe markers and white boards.  I'd be awesome.


Kelly Clarkson
I think I quite like her stuff.  It's probably something to do with being bitter and queer.


Thursday 11 August 2011

All your apps are up to date

Very good, Sniffy, how about updating your blog then?

Why don't I have any time anymore? It's ridiculous. I used to have stacks of free time in the evenings, but these days it seems as if it's nearly bedtime as soon as I've had my evening meal. Sometimes this is in fact true, especially at weekends when I don't eat until 9pm. Not that I'm ooh la la, continental or anything. It's just that it happens to be that way when I'm with my other half.

Of course the biggest time thief in my life (apart from work) is my little dog. I love him, I in no way resent him, and most of the time I really enjoy him tippy-tappying up and down, up and down, up and fucking down along the laminate flooring-of-much-distress. I love taking him for his run around the woods in the evening, but it does take time - especially when I'm hiding behind trees, avoiding the scary leprechaun man.

But the little dog and weird leprechauns aside, a more recent drain on my time has been house pride. This has involved all sorts of things an visits from talkative electricians, joiners... and plumbers - all associated with making the house a home, ready for decoration.

We finally painted the living room the other week. This should have been straightforward had I not insisted on trying to take the radiator off. Did I close the valves, empty it? Did I fuck. Did I put something in place to prop it on so the connectors weren't put under immense strain when we realised we couldn't hold its filled weight and so had to put it on the floor? No, this is me we're talking about. Did I panic and scream like a girl when the pipe connector gave way under the weight and the entire contents of my central heating system pissed out onto the living room floor? You fucking betchya! But at least I managed to paint behind it ok, so I'm guessing the eventual outcome was what I'd been looking for.

But I've learned a valuable lesson and bought a paint pad for when the dining room gets daubed in "rice cake": the radiator stays put or I die on fire.

Sterlise the fuckers
The lawless youth have been rampaging through our cities, causing mindless destruction and looting. I think the majority of the population are finally coming round to my way of thinking with regards to sterilising waste of space scum whose families haven't worked for generations. They're parasites, plain and simple. The only things they're capable of are 1) filling out benefits forms, 2) causing trouble and 3) breeding. Remove (1) to discourage (3) and there'll be fewer of them for (2). And if that doesn't work, we should try the sympathetic intervention of horsewhipping the little cunts into the next decade.