I'd hate to be in your position....

WARNING! I wasn’t in a great mood when I wrote this. This is something of a rant. Apologies.

‘I’d hate to be in your position’. That’s what one of my colleagues announced as I sat chatting to a friend about the date she’d lined up for herself at the weekend (it went very well too – just in case you were wondering…)
‘Oh yeah?’ I replied as I looked up from my (interrupted) conversation. ‘What position is that then?’ ‘Ah you know….Back on the dating scene and all…Particularly for you two….with kids and exes and all. It must get a lot harder as you get older…’
Gee thanks! That’s the sort of vote of confidence I could do with right now. NOT. Why don’t people talk to me about how exciting meeting all these new people could be? How I might finally wind up with my soul-mate? (I don’t really believe in soul-mates, so that might be tricky…But you know what I mean…) The doom and gloom story, that’s peddled out to me with alarming regularity. I sometimes think some of my colleagues think I’ve been some sort of nun since Husband No2 vanished. Not true. I also think they believe me to be somewhat stupid.
‘Have you tried on-line dating Michelle? Something like Match.com? I've seen their advert on TV - it looks lovely!’ No….I’m a reasonably intelligent woman who is not living under a rock somewhere and who has been mostly sort-of-single for the last three years... ‘OF COURSE I HAVE!’ I always reply. I just hate it!
‘But my friend’s sister’s friend met their long-term love/live-in partner/husband on Dating Direct/Match/PoF! You just never know….!’ they add wisely, as if to solve all my problems. Really?? Well for every lovely, happy story (and yes, I even personally know a few), I can give you 200 horror stories. 200 stories that, in a good frame of mind would make you howl with laughter. But God, in a poor frame of mind, could make you reach for the razor blades.

I’m pretty sick of the platitudes to be honest. The ‘you’ll find someone when you least expect it’, the ‘you’re a great catch – any man would be lucky to have you’ and my personal favourite; ‘it’ll happen when you’re not looking’. (How the hell does that work?? Trust me, if you’re single, you’re looking). They’re all bullsh1t. And the fact that they’re usually dished out by people who have been married for…oh, around 100 years doesn’t help. What the hell do they know? And yes, I realise that people are only being kind, trying to boost my confidence and make me feel slightly less of a social misfit. After all, they don’t know that I have a near pathological fear that I will die alone (and in true Bridget Jones style, be eaten by my very large and rather haughty cat). They don’t know that I really don’t deal in platitudes (particularly when they’re prefaced with the ‘poor you – it must be awful for you’ type bollocks).

Now I don’t want you reading this and thinking ‘Oh dear God, she’s desperate’. I’m not. There are things I could’ve taken further but chose not to, just as there are things (well….actually…just the one) that I’d like to have run with to see what happened, but as I’ve learnt at my cost over the years, you can’t make someone want you. I’d been in relationships in one way or another continuously from the age of 16 until three years ago, so I’m pretty sure I can be in another. It’s just that I don’t want to live out yet another platitude; ‘you have to kiss a lot of frogs Michelle, until you get that prince’. What a pile of crap! I’m pretty sure I don’t have to date a load of losers to find someone I actually want to be with for a prolonged period of time. I think, after all this time, that I’ll know whether the man in question floats my boat or not. (So to speak…)

So there you have it. Rant over. Being single sometimes sucks. Being single sometimes rules. But if you’re going to talk to me about it, please don't tell me how you're soooooo glad you're not me and also please remember; I deal in honesty – not platitudes.

Phew! I’ll shut up now.

You can't polish a turd.....fact!

So…I’m a little bit crap. At most things. Good friend Sa and I can be heard to remark that the phrase ‘you can’t polish a turd’ is made for us. Sa uses it to describe her physical appearance (which let me say right now, is not in the least bit turd-like. She always looks lovely). But me, I reckon I can apply it to almost everything I do…

See this cup of coffee balanced precariously on is saucer, ready to spill over at any moment…?

 That’s my cup of coffee from a very lovely afternoon in Clifton this weekend. (C was not impressed about having to buy me a coffee in the bar. ‘Seriously Michelle, a coffee?? I have NEVER ordered a coffee in a bar in my life before’). What the photo illustrates to me is my overriding crap-ness (after C pointed it out to me obviously – I love a good analogy….or whatever it is in picture form…). It’s not on the saucer properly, it’s about to fall over and it’s all a bit, well dribbly and rubbish-looking. It just sums up the fact that, no matter how hard I try, everything I do is tinged (sometimes everso slightly, but it’s always there) with a bit of crap.

Here’s an example….I wrote about the hell that is the Yearbook photo a few blogs ago. Well the photos came back. This is what I looked like.

I’m not joking. Jabba the Hutt (for those of you who aren't Return of the Jedi fans). Despite my very best efforts and all the compliments of the day, I still look slightly (well quite a lot really) crap when a camera is shoved in my face. Spectacularly un-photogenic is the polite way of putting it I believe. (To add insult to injury, the Yearbook is proofed by my line-manager. I asked, well begged really, for me to be allowed to replace the Jabba-like photograph with one that I can actually bear to look at. The answer was a resounding no. Brilliant).

I also spend a large proportion of my day twiddling (is that even a word?) with my hair. I do it when I’m driving, in meetings (very professional), watching TV, chatting with friends….pretty much all of my waking time. I have no idea why I do it – I’ve always done it. Always. The result sometimes though is that I have weird bits of hair sticking up. Or that I get a massive knot that I can’t untangle. None of this looks good – the actual activity nor the end result.

It’s not just my appearance that is turd-like. The things I do day-to-day are also pretty rubbish. Like enrolling for the next stage in my degree, but forgetting to actually complete the registration process. Or being told that as I’d messed up too many times, the OU has put me on an alert system….meaning that if I mess up again, I will never, ever be able to study with them again. (The petulant teenaged streak in me is desperate to put this to the test…!)

And there’s more:
I’ve lost a little (loads more to go but it’s all in the right direction) weight recently and was paying for some huge Lego monstrosity in an extremely busy Tesco when my jeans fell down. Not a little bit down, but halfway-down-my-arse down. Black see-through knickers on display for all to see. (In truth I was part horrified, part delighted!)
I drive a Corsa. It’s a sweet little car and I’ve had it a little less than three years. In that time, I’ve lost two wing mirrors (neither was my fault. Honest), created £600 worth of damage by scraping the side of my car on a wall whilst trying to park and now I have a passenger door that doesn’t open from the inside (this does not create a good first impression – believe me). Could happen to anyone? Maybe. But it all happens to me.

Do you get the picture? I could go on for ages about this – but it’s depressing.

And do you know what? I sort of like that I’m a bit crap. I like to think that my ditzy inner-self is one of my endearing qualities. No one likes a show-off do they? No-one likes someone who’s utterly perfect all the time.
So, I may look a bit sh1t sometimes (especially in photos!), I may twiddle with my hair and tie it in knots. I may spill stuff in restaurants and walk into things. And I may have to get out of my car, just to walk round and let you out of the passenger side. But so what? I’m embracing the crap-ness.....and maybe even highlighting it....!

After all, as someone pointed out to me recently;

You can’t polish a turd…..but you can put glitter on it J

Anniversaries

I was happily chatting this afternoon, with someone who was not incredibly au fait with my recent past. ‘So how long has it been?’ she asked. ‘Three years’ I replied. ‘Actually, three years almost exactly. Three years on Easter Sunday’. Ouch.

I’ve also just read the most recent blog of very dear friend L. She also had a recent ‘anniversary’. One that to my shame, I forgot. It’s not one to be marked really, but I wish I’d have text her just so she knew I was thinking of her.

These things got me thinking… In honesty, the time of year in relation to the semi-shambles that is my life at times didn’t occur to me until this afternoon. And it makes me sad. I don’t want to hunt down the life that ran away and changed that Easter Sunday three years ago, but I’m a little tired of trying to find a replacement one.

However, as the wise L said in her own blog, you can’t change the past. You can only make the very best of the present and the future.

I guess I’ll keep trying to do that then.

Procrastination

I have lots of things to do. Lots. I have a very busy full-time job, a degree to complete, a separate foundation degree to embark on, writing projects to work on, some really important paperwork to get started with (speeding fine if you must know), a pretty healthy social life, as well as the day-to-day drudgery of running a home and a family.

So why, on a free evening when I have the house pretty much to myself, do I find myself in front of the TV watching the home shopping channels??! I could be doing anything, writing, studying, ironing, housework; something productive at least. But no, I decide that watching (frankly odd) TV presenters demonstrating activities like steam-cleaning a dirty hob, or making chips in some giant-hot-air-frying-thing is infinitely better than say, reading a Psychology text-book or actually ironing some clothes.

Now I have a lot of guilty pleasures as far as TV is concerned. I love a bit of trash telly; Ashley Banjo’s Secret Dance Crew, America’s Next Top Model Allstars (really doesn’t get any better than that, believe me), throw in a bit of Big Fat Gypsy whatever and a dollop of pretty much anything on the Crime and Investigation channel and you’ve got a pretty good idea of my secret TV watching habits. But this home shopping stuff….this is a new low. This is procrastination at its very worst. (I have to point out, very firmly, that I have never, I repeat never, been even so much as tempted to buy anything at all from these channels. HONEST!)

So, tonight I’m doing some productive stuff. I think it’s time for some resolve. I bought a new notebook and two lovely pens yesterday. Instead of trying not to get excited about the new range of Liz Earle skincare on QVC (this stuff is actually very good. I kid you not!), I will use my new notepad to make notes for future writing projects. (I’ve got blogs in my head that need writing, maybe a longer term project as well as a co-writing thing). I’ll also enrol (successfully this time) onto my foundation degree course. I may even get round to paying my speeding fine and opening the ever-growing pile of post that is sitting on my desk.

Oh...but I’ve just noticed that The Apprentice is about to start…

The resolve starts tomorrow…

Ugh! Adele!

I don’t like Adele. Not as a person. I don’t know the woman or know enough about her to make that judgement. But as a recording artist, I absolutely hate her. Her music is what I like to call ‘music to slit your wrists to’. Harsh? Maybe, but come on – this woman does not know when to stop bleating on about her broken heart.

It was brought to my attention recently, that she’s successfully tapped into the vulnerability of women – and I whole-heartedly agree. This particular song frankly makes me want to perforate my ear-drums with a rusty nail. I. Can’t. Stand. It. Most of me hates it because I think it implies that women (or maybe just Adele, seeing as she’s the one singing it…?) spend lots of time thinking about ‘the one that got away’. We mostly don’t. Honest. (And if we did, we wouldn’t want ‘Someone Like You’ – we’d want you. And we wouldn’t be wishing you the best. We’d be wishing you a horrible time with the new woman – who would turn out to be the mad-psycho-bitch-from-hell, clearly). But…there is the tiniest part of me that hates it because it touches a nerve. (LJ thinks I’m kidding myself. She thinks I hate it solely because it touches a nerve…..Yeah LJ. Whatever!)

We were chatting in work the other day about exes and anyone who there’s been a ‘history’ with, and we agreed that we all get that catch in the throat when we run into, hear from or hear about an ex. (Admittedly, there were no men involved in that conversation though…) That sort of heart-stopping moment that catches you off guard. And it’s made even worse if you see them with another women, or hear about how blissfully happy they are with said woman – their latest girlfriend, partner, wife, whatever. It’s just kind of weird and sort of hard. I’m not sure that ever goes away but I guess after time, you just sort of stop thinking about it. The one thing it does leave you wondering though (or maybe it’s just me?) is; ‘Why wasn’t it me? Wasn’t I good enough?’

In my case though, I’m fortunate enough to have Husband No 2 in my life who has very generously told me (many, many times) precisely why it wasn’t me (and no, clearly I wasn’t good enough!). I’m still in the dark in a few cases though. And does it bother me? In my saner moments, no. When I’m feeling insecure, yes probably. But I don’t want to hear Adele whining on and on about it. So she’s had her heart broken? Haven’t we all?

I’m all for reliving the pain of a nasty break-up through music. After all we’ve all done it. But why Adele and her self-pitying nonsense? Why not The Buzzcocks? (A personal favourite) That’s nice and rant-y and angst-y, as well as being heart-breaking. Or even the current No 1 from Gotye? Even that’s more interesting.

Maybe I should be applauding the woman. She’s made a fortune by bemoaning her lost love – making the best of a bad situation I guess. However, you’ll never hear me mourning ‘the one that got away’ by singing along to Adele. Not ever. Nah….it The Buzzcocks for me everytime. After 3 everyone – all angst-y now;
‘Ever fallen in love with someone?
Ever fallen in love?
In love with someone
Ever fallen in love? (Love…)
In love with someone
You shouldn't have fallen in love with'

That's much more like it! 

Should I be offended....part two

Last week at work we had one of the days we all fear. (when I say 'we' I mean the staff not the students....they seem to love anything that means they get some attention). It was Yearbook photo time.

The whole team hate this with a passion. The photos for the preceding two years have been nothing short of hideous. In the 2010 edition, I was going through a brunette phase. (What the hell was I thinking?!) I'm sure the 2011 photograph was taken shortly after a fire-drill. In the rain. The end result was that I looked about 67. And to be fair, no other female staff member fared that well either (the men, for some reason, look perfectly normal....how does that happen??).

So this year, I was determined things would be different. There was absolutely no way that I was going to be immortalised for a generation of Sixth Formers as some frumpy old woman. No way on this earth. I got up a full 20 minutes earlier to give myself time to put in contact lenses, apply more than the usual amount of make-up (the flash on those things is so harsh!) and to run the straighteners through my already pretty straight hair.

745am rolls around and I make my way to work. So far, so good. I can see, I have eyeliner on and I have proper straight hair. Excellent! By 815, I've already been spotted by a couple of students. 'Hey miss, your hair looks nice', 'you look good without your glasses' etc etc... You know the sort of thing...

All was going well until I see Ph. 'Oh my god Pfeiffer! You look like a girl!' What?? 'You look like one of those girls in the movies who's like a speccy nerd…you know the one who falls in love with the hot jock. He won’t go out with her because she’s a geek…’ I’m not enjoying this comparison. It has to get better surely?? Ph continues; ‘She then takes off her glasses, shakes her hair and we all see she's like the hottest girl in the school!' he announces, looking very pleased with himself. (Admittedly, he does tend to overstate things rather enthusiastically). I do?? Surely this is a back-handed compliment of the highest order? I wasn’t quite sure how to take it to be honest. My initial reaction was ‘Charming – cheeky bastard!’ However, when reciting the story to C later, she sighed; ‘Aw…what a lovely thing to say!’ Is it? I thought it was slightly insulting. Maybe that’s why C is much more cheerful than me – willing to see the good in every situation…

At break time, I make my way to the staff room where I collect more compliments about the way I look. Everything from; ‘Wow! You’ve got such lovely eyes – you really shouldn’t hide them behind your glasses.’ (I like this one) to ‘And you’re wearing make-up…’ (this one, not so much. I wear make-up everyday. Every single day. Clearly, some of my colleagues have me down as some scrubbed-face frump). The compliments in general are fantastic (I’m not great at hearing them, but who is? It’s still lovely when they’re around) but it also got me thinking…What the hell must I look like every other day…??

So I faced the Yearbook photographer with a little trepidation. I probably looked ok (ish) in the flesh, but stick a lens in my face and a harsh flash-bulb and who the hell knows what could happen?! The photographer himself was about 12. He didn’t seem to understand the concern of the female members of staff and our absolute need to see the image before he sent it for publishing and he refused our pleas for a viewing. That’s, frankly, more than a little mean. We have to wait until the inevitable CD of photos lands on my desk. Of course, it’ll be too late by then. The book will have been printed and our images burned into those pages for students to smirk over for years to come. Why our idea to use our own (vetted and very possibly photo-shopped) pictures was disallowed I’ll never know…

Anyway, this whole event caused me to think long and hard about my appearance. I’m still not sure if I’m a little bit offended by the reaction to my slightly more ‘polished’ look. But I am more than a little concerned that my contact lenses caused such a stir. Who knew that my glasses were making me so unattractive..?! What troubles me even more however, is the fact that clearly, I go to work every day looking an absolute mess…! I can’t really be offended by the lovely comments made by my friends and colleagues can I? But the fact that 20 minutes work on my appearance can have such a dramatic effect is somewhat telling…I obviously don’t make much of an effort for the average working day (I make much more of an effort for playtime I can assure you)

Offended or not, I’ve decided that I will make more of an effort. I’ve started a new exercise regime (WWMD? is coming in very handy there), am getting up earlier to sort out the make-up on my seemingly geeky-looking face (since the nice lady in L’Occitane told C and I that your skin ages by a week each time you sleep in your make-up, I’ve also religiously scraped it off before bedtime. Every little helps…) and I’ve vowed to wear my lenses to work at least twice a week. Sure, I’m not going to get compliments every day of the week, but if I’m going to be anyone in Ph’s little story, I’m certainly not gonna be the speccy nerd girl…………I hope!