I am a strong, independant womanz that can now eat MUSHROOMS...

...were the immortal words i uttered (yelled) as i walked into my friends house after breaking up with my ex (he didn't like mushroom, couldn't put them in anything). ignoring the fact that after that mantra i spiralled  in to 5 months of virtual alcoholism and insanity, but while being a near alcoholic and slightly in need of a padded cell, i was independent. and loved it! so... what happened?

i have realised i have what is called "dependency issues'. yes. a afflicition usually reserved for those of the male origin, however, in this context, i mean it in the complete opposite way. I have realised that when i am with someone, (a boyfriend) that i start off aloof, maybe even standoffish. "i don't want to loose my independance" i cry to my female friends, I enjoy being my own person!! and the a few months down the line. BOOM. Uh-Oh. 

Its not enforced by anyone but me (this time). In contrast to my ex, my current beau is the bees knees, the cats pyjamas, if you will. I love him dearly with all my heart. he's never made me feel like i have to answer to him, never ever made me feel like i can't go out with my friends or do things on my own, so why have i somehow managed to bind myself to him, limpit style?? It's irritatingly pathetic. 

Boyfriend is away this weekend for a friends wedding. Invitations were sent out before we were together, I have no idea who this person is, obviously, i'm not going. That's fine. (apart from when people ask me where he is this weekend, the response to the answer is met by a confused look, and "oh, why aren't you going?" - but i'll leave that slight humilation alone for now). and so, (before you judge me too harshly, i will stress, that i don't get to have much proper one on one time with BF); instead of embracing a weekend where i don't feel the need to shave my legs, can actually paint that chest of drawers that i've been meaning to do for months, or enjoy some quality time with friends or just in my house which i haven't seen much of of late, i wimper, "I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiss him." I mean, i'm not the best feminist at the best of times, equal rights, sure, but i'd trade you my career for 2 kids and baking anyday, but that's not the point. When did it all go a bit 17th Century?

I feel abandoned (i know i'm not), I feel lonely (my best friends will be round in approximately 20 minutes), I feel like a complete moron!

This, has been quite cathartic. Thank you. In the time it has taken me to read through this I have drawn one conclusion. Women, it's true what they say, we're mental. 

i am going to go and enjoy my boy free weekend, embrace my hairy legs, but more ugly than hairy legs is dependence. 

I'm on my way, I'm on my way Home sweet home, tonight tonight..(motley crue)

courtesy of Nelly Duff

I've been rather rubbish at this blogging lark haven't I. Sometimes it's a real struggle to think of something to say. Something of any interest anyway. 

Its been a busy month or so though, insomuch that I have moved house. (hurrah!)

At 28 years old, i am FINALLY in a living situation that I love. I moved out of home when i was 21, and ever since where ever i have lived i have not been truly happy. Now, i have moved in with one of my greatest friends, into the most BEAUTIFUL house. 

We are busy 'nesting' i suppose. The cupboards are full of chocolate and wine. And we've just had Sky installed. (goodbye life) - no really, Chocolate, Wine and Broadwalk Empire sounds just about the most perfect evening in the world. 

I am busy decorating my room. And SO SO SO excited to finally be able to buy household items. Seriously, our kitchen looks like Cath Kidson showroom.

I have homes for things. THAT IS EXCITING. not everything i posess has to live in my room. I put my medicines in the MEDICINE CABINET in the BATHROOM the other day. This thrilled me. (loser). my books are in a bookcase. I HAVE CUSHIONS. and we have a fish! oh and it's just all so exciting. 

I know this sounds pretty ridiculous to most people, but really i've had a pretty rough deal when it comes to living situations. Here is a brief overview:

2004: i moved out of home to live 100miles away with my then-boyfriends of 3 months (yeah, like that was going to work). I moved in with his parents. 

2005: we moved into our own house. perfect. kinda. except we had to live with one of his friends, so it wasn't 'ours' and the relationship was crap and i was unhappy anyway.

2006 - 2007: then-boyfriend I and i broke up and i lived in no less than 3 houses. given that the break up happened a bit like this: "so, we need to renew the lease in a few weeks?" "yeah, about that. i'm moving out" -so i had to take shelter where i could, i moved into a spare room at an acquaintances house. She had a mental mental cat that would screech at me and scratch me. I think it may have been the devil.

Next house was another houseshare with some "young professionals" - a couple and the guy's girlfriend. The duration of my stay there was heavily accented by a random french girl taking the other room except never actually sleeping in there as she was shagging the brother. 

Next, and it was a houseshare with two friends. Which started off pretty awesome until one of them smoked so much pot in the 6 months we were there that he developed psychosis and sold all his posessions at the boot fair, quit his job and spend his whole day sitting on his window cill in his pyjamas. 

After that failure, i moved back to my mums as i found a job in London, stayed there for about 2 months. mmmm... moving home. Well, didn't i just feel like the accomplished adult. So, when another aquaintance was looking for a housemate for the spare room at their house.. i went for it. I went for all 8ftx8ft2 space, with only a sofa bed and a PINK Argos canvas wardrobe. I mean, i did what i could with the place but when the floor space is so small you're tight rope walking to your bed and when the kitchen and bathroom haven't seen domestos in at least 5 years, what can you do? 

I stayed there 2 years, i wouldn't have but i spent my weekends in Canterbury so i was barely there. 

late 2009: after eventually finding a job back in Kent, I moved in with my then- boyfriend III. (There was a then-boyfriend II, but he doesn't really feature in any living situations - i can count. promise)

Yet again another mistake. This house was probably by far the worse (mostly because i actually have to live in it. 5yearabsentdomestoshouse i really only stayed in occasionally)

oh no, then-boyfriend III house was something special indeed.

first thing you need to know is that it was TINY. like, couldn't swing a gerbil let alone a cat, tiny. and in this space there lived a dog. not a small dog, a basset hound. a great big fuck off huge basset hound. who didn't know his own name. A special kind of stupid. and not just stupid. oh no, destructive, angry, bitey and generally loathsome.

Not that i blame him, i'd be an angry little motherfu**er if i had to live in a kitchen about as big as my arse (which although larger than the average, in terms of kitchen size probably not so big) on unwashed bedding, getting about an hours human contact a day, and that mostly through a grill separating the living room to the kitchen.

the kitchen floor wasn't cleaned. Angrydog would protest wee quite alot and it was mopped up with kitchen towel, maybe a spray of anti-bac spray and then left. he'd been there 4 years and i bought a mop about 6 months before i moved in. I recall it was used once with all the novelty of a 3 year old getting a new toy and then left to fester outside the back door until the handle went rusty, the water in the bucket fell stagnant and the mop itself, mouldy.

Then-boyfriend III also used to use wax in his hair daily, this resulted in a waxy film covering everything in the bathroom and the sofas (thus resulting in a lovely glue for Angrydogs' hair to affix too)

BASICALLY... he didn't clean. There was no room for any of my things. It didn't feel like home. 

But thankfully we broke up anyway. 

So... 2010: i moved (very quickly) into a houseshare nearby. To start with it was pretty good! the house was nice. and the one housemate that was already seemed nice too. (anything other than the word nice doesn't really fit here). Anyway.... it was... uh.. nice. then some more people moved in and it wasn't quite so nice. But  it was somewhere to lay my head. 

By now, i was 27, and as you can see from my 'tales 'o woe' i hadn't ever really had a place to call mine, or lived with anyone i actually really really wanted to live with. 

i'm not asking for sympathy.. i made all those decisions and without alot of them i wouldn't be where i am now (which is very happy by the way) but yes...I needed a Home.(with a capital H), stat. 

it came about, (in not the best way) that one of my best friends was looking to move too; so we decided to start looking together. it took a while of on/off searching, (mostly because we were indulging in a bit of post break up crazy) but we found it. Our House. and we moved in last week. 

I'd like to invite you all round for tea from polka dot teapots and cupcakes made in my new silicone cases and we can sit on our sofa and drink wine and watch tele. and in the summer, you can all come round for BBQ's in the MASSIVE garden that's ALL OURS!!!!!!!!

I'm hoping i'm writing well enough to make my relief and happiness at finally having a real home, palpable. and that it makes some sense how this isn't just another move. and even if we don't stay at that house for long its going to be one of my favourite experiences of my life. 

xo

pickly subject...

This Christmas, I was deprived of my Gerkhins. I was quite upset by this. I thought i should drop the good folk of Marks & Sparks a line to let them know my dissatisfaction. I do hope I get a reply...


Dear M&S,


This may sound like rather an odd complaint; however, I would like to voice my disappointment at the lack of gherkins available over the festive period. Yes. Gherkins. I realise that this pickled good is probably of little importance to you, however, for the past 28 years there has been one staple of my boxing day left over lunch, and this is the Marks & Spencer gherkin. True to your tagline, these are not just Gherkins. They are Marks & Spencer Gherkins. They are tiny pickily cucumbers floating in a sea of dill and mustard seeds on top of a thatching of sliced onion. I daresay Harrods food court couldn't do a better gherkin. Oh, how I look forward to these every year. Alas, this year they were nowhere to be found. Nowhere, not in my local store in Canterbury, not in your brand spanking new Simply Food store just outside Canterbury, not in St Albans, Watford, Winchester or Southampton. Has there been a national cucumber shortage this year? For when one walked down the ailse of Sainsbury's, Tesco's etc there were jars and jars of the things in their resplendent glory. Sadly, they are not M&S and simply would not do.


Despite my huge disappointment, and the fact that for the first time in my life my boxing day sandwich was sorely lacking on the pickle front, I am sure you will be glad to hear that this incident alone did not ruin my Christmas, however, it was a close call.


Please tell me that I will not have to suffer the Mrs. Elwood soggy, sour gerkhins again that that by some cruel twist of fate that the above stores had simply sold out and I was just unlucky, not that they have been discontinued as one of your lovely employees dared suggest. For this, I could not take.


As an end note, please, despite the hilarity of the subject matter, this is a serious complaint. I really do love your gherkins and I was very much distressed that I couldn't find any in the run up to Christmas.


Yours sincerely,


Caroline 

the best laid plans of mice and er..women...

Well, I have been rather rubbish haven't I? After all that talk about blogging I seem to have gone 6 weeks without a peep. So sorry. 

I would claim to be wonderfully busy, with no time at all to document my fast paced social life, but, in fact, as is often the way, these weeks have passed me by in a haze of "meh", "squeee", "bah!" and back to "meh" (I do prefer onomatopoeic verbs, even if i do make them up myself) 

anyway, with Christmas rapidly approaching, i have found myself feeling the need to document a few things. what does christmas mean, to you, rather.. not in a biblical sense?

when i was little, it was sitting the the school hall making christingles, trying to sneakily steal jelly tots from under the teachers noses. it was making mince pies with my mum. it was undernocircumstancesmustyouenterthelivingroomonyourown and spending hours sitting in my room peeking at my stocking waiting until i could wake up my parents (5am right? right.) 

when i was a bit older it was going christmas shopping with my friend Alicia. Every year. The 23rd. (we liked to cut it fine... infact, that was the day we got our pocket money). it was the precision and care i took to wrap all my presents. it was the youth club christmas disco. it was spending hours sitting in my room with my sister peeking at our stockings waiting until we could wake up my parents (6am right? right.) 

fast forward a bit. it was getting dressed up in fairy wings and christmas hats and working christmas eve before heading out with all your friends to do the obligatory ohmygoditschristmasiloveyouohmygodimsodrunk (...yeah that bit is still the same 10 years on), getting woken up with a hangover by my sister who was peeking at her stocking and waiting until she can wake up mum (7.30 right? right.)

So thats the three stages of a child's Christmas for me. small child, older child, teenager. 

then what? what happens when you're no longer a kid, by any stretch of the imagination. 

you move away, you're not there to make mince pies with your mum (at least i'm not, when i fled the nest i flew a good 100 miles south-east which makes popping round to bake pies a bit difficult), you're not there to put the christmas decorations up while listening to Bing et al. and most importantly, you're not waking up spending hours in your room, with or without sister/hangover wondering when you can open your presents (hang on, no matter what i will most likely always have a hang over on christmas morning, so we can scrap that). In fact, you're not waking up in your room at all. You're making new traditions. and BOOM, you're an adult. 

just like that. smacked in the face with a great big wet smoked salmon (and quails eggs).

personally, every christmas that i haven't spent at home i have found oddly miserable. i haven't been forced to stay away at all. i've made the decision myself. yet, i wake up on christmas morning with respective OH and my mum calls to wish merry christmas and the familiar satsuma in the back of the throat thing happens and "how could i do this? what am i doing? i want to go hooooooooooome. this isn't CHRISTMAS!?" 

so this year, I am going home. it was a tough decision. a big part of me wanted to stay here with my friends, but then living alone this year, and the prospect of waking up on christmas morning on my own. (NB: if this every happens, it is likely i will hang myself from a christmas tree with a length of tinsel) AND the fact that my grandparents are very unwell, thought it was time to make the pilgrimage homeward.

the hard thing is, i find at christmas, is trying to decide to be an adult or a child. i think a lot of us turn into kids at christmas time, but trying to balance that with the responsibilities of being an adult is a bit of a bore sometimes. So this year, I surrender. I am going to get drunk with my sister on christmas eve (that is an adult trait that is allowed to stay in the childhood christmas wonderland in my head), and wake up and open my stocking with my sister and mum in her room (8.30am right? right.), eat quails eggs and smoked salmon (which i haven't prepared) and wear my goddamn santa hat in the car to visit the relatives. 

I may even stay up to see if i can see father christmas. 

return to sender...

mostly when i sit down to do something a bit arty, i tend to stick to what i know, which tends to be big bold acrylic or water colour pieces, mostly in a tattoo style. 

however, some time ago i experimented with something a bit more 'conceptual' (perhaps). the piece its self involved no 'actual' artwork as such, but it was the idea behind it that meant something more than pretty colours on a page. 

it was indicative to how i was feeling at the time. i felt it said a lot about the fragility of the heart and such like and how easily things come and go. i decided initially that it was a bit 'emo' (it is) and would never see the light of day, as i felt it made me vulnerable, however, that time has now passed and i thought i'd share it. 

comprised of nothing more than an envelope, some scribbles and a heavily processed photograph, the 'artistic ability' involved is minimal, however, i quite liked how it turned out. 

xo

i'm as free as a bird as now...(or am i?)

hmm, i've been thinking. about life and that. mostly relationships. with boys. (or girls, whatever is your preference). relationships of the emotional/sexual variety. in fact, just that emotional vs. sexual. is it truly possible, ladies to have a sexual relationship without getting emotions involved? i've thought a few times in my life that this was possible (and before this post makes me out to be some kind of floozy - i mean literally a couple of times, i'm a bit rubbish [gladly] with my notches on my bedpost and can assure you wouldn't win any kind of contest with my peers), i mean, i didn't want the constraints and hassle that goes with having a boyfriend, and after all, from my experience, boyfriends tend to generally be a bad idea on the whole. but i quite liked the idea of having someone to text, perhaps have a bit of a kiss 'n' a cuddle and little youknowwhat occasionally. that should satiate me right, i don't want a boyfriend. and then it happens and its cool for a while. in fact you feel (by you, i mean me) a bit smug and liberated - i am a modern woman! i am being selfish. i don't care! yeah, i don't need to be a soppy girl, i don't need any of that. ah-ha! i am a man. and then, one day, out of the blue. oh, he didn't text me? why didn't text me? (why should he, its not like he's YOUR BOYFRIEND - you know, the thing you don't want) ok, so, uh, he still hasn't texted. oh he texted, that was a bit vague. i wonder what that meant? i wonder if he wants to see me again? i hope so, i mean i hope 'that' isn't all he's after... oh wait. shit. bugger. penny drops.so that was all you (me) was after and then something happens and DING you like the guy. do you like the guy? he's nice and that right? yeah, sure. do you really think 'A Relationship' would work? no, probably not. BUTHEHASN'TTEXTEDME. and there you have it. girls, we're wired up funny. i know this is no shocking revelation. but men/boys can just 'do the deed' and carry on and somewhere along the line, us girls get caught up and then wham, you're in a bit of a pickle. 

don't get me wrong. i'm not referring to being heartbroken, i just mean, there's a twinge. a niggling feeling. that boys just don't get. we can't seperate the two, sex and emotions. when you're a girl at least. they're they are skipping down the road joined forever in blissful (notalotof) harmony.

bastards. 

xo

just sayin...

i would be quite happy if last night just didn't happen. but on the upside, it has made me realise just how much of a better person i am than some other people. 

to think that some people think they have the right to speak to you like you are scum for absolutely no reason at all. once upon a time i would have been upset, but no. not this time. it's just made me realise just how much better am without certain persons in my life. 

yeah. i win. 

xo