absorbent and porous and inebriated is she

... and i'll tell you who else is dyspraxic, while i'm on the subject and have enough moscow mule in me to make a cat talk-

watch this... and believe.




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the sartorialist

i shouldn't be doing this; i should be making a little red riding hood cape and a "grandma rocks!" t-shirt for my daughter's fairy tale ball tomorrow, but i just iced 48 cupcakes and need a cup of coffee.

in the spirit of indulgence- see yesterday- i went to harvey nichol's today. and no, i didn't buy anything, i never do. well, not unless it's xmas, and then only in the food hall, for other people. or if it's my birthday, and then only in the cosmetics hall, for other people, if you think about it. i didn't try on any £900 dresses either (today anyway), but i did find myself extraordinarily breathless over the handbag you see above, and through a genuine mist of accessory inspired tears, i had a bit of a thought.

years ago, in another life, i worked in fashion. i was around various faces who were or have become household names, and the names behind the labels that most of us can't afford, but would like to, or at least are dimly aware of. fashion people, as we know, are notoriously "odd" lot. it is exceptionally cliquey and at times socially imprenetrable, and my primary impressions of the scene were that it was populated by people that had been bullied at school and were now exacting a particular kind of passive revenge- they had become cool. they had become the styleratti.

today, pawing this ridiculous object, moved by its very dimensions, i put something together for the first time- the incredible eye for detail, the need to create order and control and to communicate through something other than direct interaction, the trophyism, and, perhaps most of all, the rules...

true style and dyspraxia may just belong together like bread and butter.





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reflexive perspective

for the last two weeks i have had this feeling that i am on the a canyon edge of illness. not, i hasten to add, whilst touching much wood, an illness proper... more of a sore throat thing that makes me feel borderline crappy and doesn't even have the balls to man up and become an actual bout of flu.

also, i have been putting on weight. and again, in the interest of perspective, i must point out that i am perfectly healthy and have not wriggled into the overweight section of the bmi chart- i'm just a smidge bigger than the clothes i want to wear really allow. let's just refer to it as borderline muffin top territory, which at thirty one and with two children (at some points literally) under my belt i sometimes feel more than entitled to roll around in as much as i like... but i just cannot allow my self to get comfortable. this is stupid for any number of reasons, not least because i think a bit of flesh looks amazing on most other women, and also for the fact that i have this idea that bootcut jeans look absolutely awful on me and should not be attempted under any circumstances. (See also linen, most shades of green, kitten heels and employment. joke.)

this, and various other things to do with hormones, bank balances and a (apparently) waning libido, tell me i need something to shake all this up. a friend mentioned to me today we should start going for a weekly run together (i mumbled something about my knees in a non-commital fashion, but..), i found myself ordering my coffee today with soy rather than skimmed, and then even toying with the idea of going decaff (this is like a sixty-a-day smoker toying with the idea of only ever buying candy cigarettes from now on). all this tells me that maybe i need to at least make some token changes in order to placate the psychosomatic imbalance in sweetie-ville. or something.

anyway- so far what i am referring to as the me+ctrl+alt+del options list thus:-

1. start running/ saving for the physiotherapy bills.
2. do the master cleanse and temporarily become insane but thin, hopefully recharging my immune system along the way.
3. swap coffee for green tea and, like, pilates.

4. reduce the gluten in my diet (heartbreaking).

5. realise what incredibly self indulgent thoughts these are and how lucky i am that this is all i'm dealing with right now, that even if it doesn't always look like it within the context of the society i live in, i am extraordinarily fortunate and should put this energy into realising that and attempt in whatever small or large ways i can to improve the lives of those that i love and in my community... with donuts.

procrastinistan

so! excitingly, my procrastination has a very serious psychological reason behind it- i am afraid of success. i know this, because i just read it on the internet whilst procrastinating. ergo, i am afraid of successful housekeeping- probably because it puts me in the role of "housewife" and i resist this, being particularly unkeen on marriage to an inanimate object, especially a draughty one with rising damp. what a fascinating insight into my psychological makeup.

there is none more valuable tool to pyschological self diagnosis, and indeed procrastination, than the internet. for example, this morning in the time that i could have been uselessly pursuing the ridiculous bourgeouis goals of clean clothes and a habitable living space, i have accessed information on how i should implement systems analysis in order to streamline my laundry activities; i have found out what barack obama had for breakfast; how one might employ heated rollers as makeshift pain relief; how much sky is going to cost me this month, and that an old friend of mine now keeps monkeys in rural buckinghamshire.

to label the gathering of these shiny pieces of information as mere time wasting, we must quantify the value of each them against the assumed benefits of changing the bedsheets and toilet cleaning, and therefore more time must be devoted to developing the infrastructure of this proposed assesment. so now, really, to do this properly, i have to develop a spreadsheet and a experience-value cross referencing system...

i should probably just get on with cleaning the fridge out.

malaise de la maladroit

my son was recently diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder recently- or dyspraxia, or congenital maladroitness, or clumsy child syndrome. pick one, they are all the same thing.

there are certain differences between r.baby and other kids. he can't catch a ball, write his name, hop, draw a picture, or walk across a room without falling over or breaking something. he is very bright, but has problems following instructions and ordering his thoughts. he is very easily distracted. he is obsessed with small details, robots, and small details of robots. i am at the moment trying to work out if he might have asperger's syndrome, as charmingly portrayed on the big screen in "napoleon dynamite" (... at least that's what *i* think automatically of. i think it's a coping mechanism on my part- in the face of my son's special needs, i see jon heder falling off a bike and do a quiet guffaw. i am probably going to hell.) my son starts school in september, and i want him and the classroom he is going into to be as prepared as possible, and i suppose i just... want to know.

there's such a lot of overlap between the two conditions that one minute i am content with the d.c.d. diagnosis, and the next i am racing to the internet typing "my son walk on his tiptoes, flapping his hands and licking things whenever he is excited- aspergers?" into google and biting my nails down to the cuticle. should i be pushing for an asperger's diagnosis? who exactly is that going to help? and exactly who has just spread black poster paint all over the living room?

of course i am concerned for him. his school career, and indeed his life career are not going to be easy. i should know because i have d.c.d. too, and it's been a whirlwind of disorganised thought, rubbish coordination, wierd spontaneous behaviour, stumbling over my feet (physically and metaphorically), being thought generally odd, and the pitiful self esteem levels that this entire bundle of joy results in. this is maybe why it took so long for r. baby to be diagnosed- i think his behaviour is entirely normal.

oddness leads to isolation, and i see this happening already in his social life. other kids aren't that interested in hearing extended monologues about wall-e's elbows or lack thereof, and r. baby has a habit of zoning into a hinge or an axle, say, on a toy and operating it, transfixed, for hours. on the other hand though, he is outgoing and confident and sensitive to other people's thoughts and feelings, even if sarcasm is entirely out of his range of understanding. everyone loves him. now.

he is to be re-assessed in four months, and should be hearing from occupational therapy any day now. i am adrift in indecision.

on the plus side, however, i have found the perfect wedding guest dress. now i just have to work on becoming the perfect wedding guest.

that damned grey dress

its barely february, and yet the ugly subject of weddings seems to have already reared its beautiful head.

i am a single mother in my 30's. i have a lovely boyfriend who lives a long way away. he is in his twenties. during our happy three years together, we have attended a fair few weddings, and, if i were to emply particularly flowery language, and given the subject that might just be what i decide to do, i might describe them as hideous blips on the otherwise blissful plain of our togetherness. or something.

to begin with, these events always provide more than their fair share of sartorial angst, but i think this says more about me than necessarily what is required. i have spent approximately 56 kajillion hours in changing rooms, umm-ing over the appropriateness of a skirt length, ahh-ing over the acceptability of a particular shade of blue in the name of getting it just right- for which read "charming, yet unremarkable." but, to cut a fairly long and tedious story short, i have, despite all the shopping, worn the same grey dress i got from h&m in the sale, for a tenner, to each and every wedding. yeah- grey. not dove grey, or grey-with-a-hint-of-pink, or lilac. no, the sky-right-before-it-pisses-down grey. and that is a fairly handy metaphor for how i feel about weddings; any previous enthiusiasm gets rained off in the face of things being... not quite right.

why this should be, this big sigh in the face of other people's matrimonials, i don't know. actually i do. what all these weddings have had in common, other than alcohol, bread rolls, vomit and that damned grey dress, is this: none of them have been ours. now, don't start thinking that that is at the heart of the matter, because it is not. you will never meet anybody as truly ambivalent about marriage than me. but, if, say, it was our wedding, there is at least a small chance, that possibly, perhaps, we might enjoy it. maybe. instead, we stand about, too drunk, avoiding eye contact with eachother during the commitment parts, trying not to die of resentment when the other disappears for four hours looking for cigars, jiggling along politely to a piss-poor rendition of 'groove is in the heart'.

anyway, this morning my beloved called me from his car on the way to a meeting, and, after we had caught up on the last few hours, spoken of the weather and breathlessly reassured eachother of our love o'er the hectares of slush betwixt us, he mentioned that we have been invited to a wedding. but! in light of a dimly remembered and doubtlessly drunken announcement at the onset of the year that i would be retiring from the wedding circuit hence, he thought i would rather not go. this bewildering ur-invitation was followed, inevitably, by a fairly heated argument in which we traded accusations and unresolved resentments, disappointments and disillusions, passive aggressions and grand transgressions... and, as you may not quite have gathered by now, its not even our wedding.

three terminated phone calls later, it has been decided that i will be in attendance, with lines drawn under all wedding experiences previous, and a new set of rules and boundaries laminated in my clutch bag (essentially, "each of us should avoid leaving the other on their own" and "be nice"). the changing room angst can begin again in earnest.

the grey dress is to go to charity. probably "mind".