The bog blog

Dear Cistern Sisters,

Today, not for the first time, when I went to the bathroom, I sat in someone else’s pee had an unpleasant experience.

So I have a bone to pick with some of you.

(Gentlemen, feel free to look away now. If you choose to proceed, don’t bitch complain to me. You have. Been. Warned.)

My Cubicle Colleagues, it’s time you and I had a frank chat. I need to talk to you about the way you use that most hideous of common structures; the Public Toilet.

You know the ones. The ones with undefinably nauseating smells, noxiously mystery stains and frightening tragic hilarious bemusing graffiti. The Laydeez Lavs. The bog. The loo.

I’m not going to talk about men’s public toilets. I neither know NOR WANT TO KNOW what those are like. The last time I was in one was thirty-two years a long time ago. Our family was on one of its frequent interstate road trips. At 2am we stopped and a bleary 12 year old me stumbled, half awake, into the (thankfully empty) wrong toilets at the petrol station.

Therapy has done wonders, although I still flinch when someone says urinal.

Which, as it happens, is surprisingly often.

I try to avoid using the public loo. Sometimes, though, the need outweighs the fear and you just have to go.

I know many of my fellow Porcelain Princesses share this abject horror of the Public Lav. If you work in an office, you also have to share a Corporate Loo. There’s no avoiding the fact that sometimes you’re going to have to use amenities that have also been used by revolting filthy alien horrid unknown humans.

Recently, some of you have told me of your techniques for avoiding contact with any surfaces in these offending amenities. Some of you have told me that you don’t sit on the seat.

Excuse me?

That’s right. You hover above the bowl in a feat of super human gymnastic strength, and don’t sit down. I get it – you’re trying to avoid sitting in someone else’s urine. Or maybe you’re just trying to develop the upper-thigh strength of a horse.

This has solved a mystery for me. See, I’m a Butt Planter. When I sit down on said bog, I sit on the seat. And no matter how hard I try, no matter what creative angles I use, I cannot get pee on the seat. It’s physically impossible.

Yes, I’ve tried. Why do you ask?

So exactly whose pee is it that we’re all sitting in avoiding? Who’s responsible for all these porcelain puddles?

It’s you. It’s all you Toilet Hoverers.

You’re trying to avoid the pee created by all the other women trying to avoid the pee of all the other women trying to avoid the pee… in a weird, self-perpetuating Obsessive Compulsive cycle of puddle creation that would make Howard Hughes proud (and revolted).

So here’s the deal, on behalf of myself and all other Butt Planters. If you Bowl Hoverers and Lavatory Levitators promise to plant your butt cheeks firmly down on the seat as it was designed, there will be no more pee puddles.

If you need to develop your upper thigh strength, go to the gym.

(And use the Public Toilets there. I guarantee I’ll never sit in your pee there).

If you don’t honour your part of this deal, I promise I will blog about my theories around why I often find the seat on the toilets in the Ladies Lav up, rather than down.

Think about it.

Don’t make me go there.

Are you a Lavatory Levitator, or Butt Planter?

Who do you see in your mirror?

The other day, a gorgeous mother of two was in the press, talking about her career and family.

Some people posted lovely supportive comments under the article online.


Some other people posted some extremely mean, judgemental, callous and arseholey comments under there, judging her on her mothering skills, her appearance, and mostly her weight. I'm not going to link to the article here. Don't feed the beast.

Chrissie Swan, you didn't deserve any of that judgement. Nobody does.

The wonderful Mrs Woog, and equally fabulicious BigWordsBlog blogged about this appalling turn crap. Then got their own fair share of nasty weight-ist comments as well.

Of course, all these keyboard heroes posted using anonymous handles. And they all said that weight was a health issue, costing us blah blah per year as a community, responsibility to our children to be healthy, blah blah wanky smug blah.

Fuck that shit.

To all the cowardly weight-ist anonymouses...

Before you get too smug about science, science tells us that people who are overweight have higher life expectancy than the under or "healthy" weight people out there.

Fitness impacts life expectancy far more than fatness.

So let's not hide our prejudice behind the great god of science, OK?

Let's get real here.

Being "fat" is an aesthetics issue, hiding like a coward inside a simpering faux-caring costume of health.

Being over size 12/14 is not currently within that narrow, ever-changing FASHION of how we're supposed to look to be attractive - to be ACCEPTABLE.

A couple of hundred years ago, plumpness was the epitome of sexy for women. But, fashion is a fickle mistress and a complete bitch to boot.

People are too scared to admit that they've been conditioned to not like looking at people over a particular size. It disgusts them. But saying "you disgust me" isn't very nice, is it?

So they hide their mean-ness, their shallow conditioned prejudices in talking about what's "good for us".

In the same way we should stop telling women what to wear to be pretty/age appropriate/safe we need to stop telling people what size they should be.

Be who you are.

Diet if you like, or not.

Exercise if you like, nor not.

It's your responsibility, not mine, what you choose to be.

Weight - like age, gender, race and sexuality should never be used to put people down, as a way to make you feel superior when you look at another person.

Frankly, I'd rather look at a nice fat person, than a healthy-weighted judgemental arsehole. And that includes looking in the mirror.

Who do you see when you look in yours?

In the previous edit of this post I had a picture of Nigella Lawson and a picture of Gillian McKeith. Nigella is, as most of us know, a food writer/chef.  Gillian makes her living telling other people what they should eat. I juxtaposed the two photos, stating which person I would rather be. In light of comments made - rightly - about the unintentional inferences this made about appearance, I've removed that piece of this post.

Keyboards breed cowards. But that's a subject for another post.

So come on, all you keyboard cowboys, disagree with this post? Tell me.

I'm an angry, fat, 44 year old woman with a severe cold and the first day of the first period I've had in 10 months.

Bring. That. Shit. On. I dare you.

What do arses, Osama Bin Laden and prostate exams all have in common?

Hello fellow batshitcrazylaydeez. This post is for you. You know who you are.

Some of you know my day job is training people. Actually I prefer the term evil influencer facilitator. Training implies teaching and teaching implies knowledge and as discussed previously, I don’t do knowledge.

What I am good at is guiding*, and flying by the seat of my pants. I love that I can start a workshop knowing we’ll get to the destination but having NO IDEA what might happen on the journey there.

That’s what got me into training teaching guiding leading people astray facilitating in the first place.

The workshop journey is a thrill ride, a roller coaster, an adventure.

OK, sometimes it’s just a quick jaunt on a very slow merry go round, with horses so small nobody’s feet ever leave the ground. Those workshops are hideous torturous thankfully rare.

When I started the workshop today, I was a bit worried. Almost immediately it became apparent that most of the learners were “Investigator/Analytic” and/or “Orchestrator/Driver” types. These are the people who communicate in facts, figures, proof, knowledge. Left-brainers.

I’m a batshitcrazy person right-brainer through-and-through.

Uhoh.

These types of communicators don’t respond to emotion, or intuition. My stocks in trade.

The universe had sent me a headache challenge. I know I was going to have to work extra hard to get them to step onto the roller-coaster.

So I did.

I dug deep and channelled my batshitcrazy – well – like crazy.

I joked. I flapped my hands. I talked about some of the dumb things I’ve done. I took risks – I rode that roller coaster right up to the very top of the highest crest.

Then the BEST. THING. HAPPENED.

I looked around, and every single one of those left-brainy-types was in that front roller coaster car with me. So we all hung on for dear life and plunged onwards.

I took them where I GUARANTEE none of them ever wanted needed expected to go. To Batshitcrazyville.

In fact, I took them just to the outskirts of Batshitcrazyville. Then THEY took the wheel and drove ME at break-neck speed down the main street.

Someone drew Osama Bin Laden.

Someone talked about arse.

Someone talked about prostate exams.

And for a change none of those someones was me!

And then we all sniffed pens.

What do you expect when you embark on a training journey?

* Footnote: When I was first setting up my business, I wanted a fancy shmancy Latin name for it. I decided on the Latin word for “guide”. I ran it through an internet translator and discovered that the Latin word for “guide” is “Rectum”. I squirted coffee out my nose. At work. Yay me.

I doubt Rectum Consulting will ever see the light of day. Ahem.

PS: This is where I’m staying tonight. This is one of the nastier places my training journey has taken me. If a picture paints a thousand words, 997 of these are “shit” and the other 3 are “Oh the humanity”!

Of mushrooms and disenchantment

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.” —Max Weber

Max Weber – sociologist – is talking about the loss of the sacred, the loss of our feeling of awe and amazement and the sense of magic. This loss has been brought on by the age of science, the extreme – and sometimes zealous – desire for rationality.

The loss of enchantment.

I get the desire to rely on science rather than “non-science”. Science has given humans an immense advantage in the survival of our species. I believe though that we have to be careful how far we take this reliance on our left brains.

There’s a danger in believing that if it can’t be proved, it’s not real.

I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in God. So I guess I’m an atheist. I don’t believe we should all be living our lives by any set of rules linked to an external force that will reward or punish us for our behaviour.

But I look at some of the atheists I know and think they take it too far. Being an atheist isn’t about intellectual superiority, and shouldn’t become a cause pursued with religious fervour. Scepticism is taking over as a new religion. Take a look in the mirror you guys, you’re more like the people you’re being intolerant of than you realise.

I do believe in something other. I believe there’s more to existence than science can currently prove. And I like that. I feel no desire to debunk every possible belief that hasn’t currently been proved. I don’t believe that we must be rational at all cost. Where’s the fun in that?

I also don’t feel the need to preach to and convert everyone I know to the great god science.

Weber says that “ God, magic, and myth are now replaced with logic and knowledge.”

In Western civilisation, I believe he’s right.

What is the long-term cost to art, creativity, literature, as we leave belief behind us? What will this cost us if we continue to worship only at the altar of science?

What does it mean to our sense of morality, ethics, and values, if all we care about is rationality?Time will tell. For me though, civilisation without magic, without the unknown, a sense of the divine, the enchanting stuff that makes your hair stand on end because it triggers something deep in your more primitive brain, will be a pretty dull place.

Footnote:

Many thanks to Julie Klop for bringing Weber to my attention.

A touch of magic in dull old Burwood is what prompted this post. This is a very large ring of mushrooms – a Fairy Ring – around a tree down the road from our house. I couldn’t get an aerial view to show it properly, but here it is – first as is:

And now showing the actual path of the mushrooms.

Magical, huh?

 

Where do you find the enchanted in your life?

A love letter to my brain

Dear brain,

I love you.


It’s true, we’ve had our differences with ourself over the years. You’ve often let me down – sometimes horribly.

It’s taken me almost 44 years to fall in love with you, and it happened – unlike shampoo promises – overnight.

I’ve been finding things a bit tough the last few weeks. (See when I Lost My Shit). Things culminated in last Thursday’s Bingle.)

Last night I felt quite low. I’ve been trying to kick start you to get writing again but I was feeling seriously intimidated by my worldly, educated writer friends.

I remembered watching the radiant, charismatic Professor Karen R Brooks talking on film about her favourite books. I tried to picture myself answering the same questions the interviewer posed.

My favourite books? Umm. Doctor Who when I was a kid. Sara Douglass and some other fantasy writers whose names I can never remember. Some great books I’ve read. That I can’t remember. A book I read last week. No, can’t remember who it was by. It was about… something.

My answers wouldn’t be erudite, witty, full of wonderful examples of timeless classics and newly found wonders of the literary world, because I have a dysfunctional memory. How then, can I ever be a writer?

My darling brain, you have, at any given moment, at least four subjects of thought happening. Let’s call them tracks. Sometimes it’s more like eight tracks, but not in a cool-alternative-look-at-my-retro-stereo kind of way.

In a holy-god-how-can-I-keep-everything-in-my-head-at-once-and-not-have-a-melt-down kind of way.

And then I have a meltdown.

You’re filled with any number of internal conversations at once at any given time. Like now:

• Trying to focus on this post so that it doesn’t suck too much.
• Lamenting the tiny missing diamond in your ring.
• Wondering when you’ll get to see the next Game of Thrones episode and whether Tyrion will be in it and OMG WHY DID THEY TAKE THE KHALISI’S DRAGONS?
• On the alert for the sound of thumping feet as The Child comes storming in to demand food/drink/cuddles/help with Paper Mario on the Wii. (Ah yes here he comes. Writing about him must cast a Summon Sprog spell).
• Considering whether to wash clothes, given the craptastic Melbourne weather.

(And don’t think I didn’t notice that you made me open up the GoT Wiki to have browse in the middle of writing this post. Yes I know you needed to check the spelling of Khalisi but that doesn’t take 20 minutes.)

No wonder you go a bit funny when I add external conversations to these multiple internal ones. No wonder you often start one conversation and skip tracks during and end with a completely different conversation, giving everyone the shits confusing all and sundry.

Brain, you can’t learn in-depth information. You’ve made me a dilettante.

Or maybe a fairly rubbish polymath.

A half-arsed Renaissance Woman.

I know a little about a hell of a lot. Look up Jill of All Trades in the dictionary, my picture would be there. If I’d remembered to send it to them.

Looking back I see a lifetime of Anxiety Disorder and depression. You, my brain, have been on high alert in case you forget something for as long as I can remember.


I see difficulties with the most mundane domestic crap. I see the light, noise, frenetic activity of Saturday morning grocery shopping. I see the stress of keeping all those balls in the air while having four internal conversations, two external ones, filtering out all the other conversations around you and remembering to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I come home cranky, overstimulated and exhausted. Yay for weekends.

So here’s the deal. I forgive you for the challenges you’ve given me over the years.

The way you’ve left me feeling like an idiot, somehow different to everyone else. Somehow sub-standard.

Somehow not in the SMART PERSONS’ CLUB.

Somehow unable to do basic stuff everyone else finds easy.

I forgive you for being a disappointment compared to my highly educated, intelligent and spectacularly qualified family.

I forgive you because finally, I get it.

In the middle of the night, I had an epiphany. I realised that, well, actually, you’re my brain. My answers to those literary questions would be crap because I can’t remember anything. But they’d be my crap, in my voice. With a little dose of batshit crazy self-deprecating humour in there.

If I come across as a scattered, batshit crazy person instead of an intellectual, professional, intelligent individual, so what? Maybe THAT’S my brand. THAT’S my voice. Batshit crazy person with no memory.

A while ago I wrote about being truthful (and warts).

My truth is scattered across a canvas of chaos, anxiety, and unhealthy doses of Shiraz.

And that’s OK, because a four track mind has to be better than half-track one, right?

Brain, I love you because of all the things you do that make me different. I love my batshit crazy, convoluted, crowded internal landscape, and I’m going to embrace it.

I love you because you finally found my – our – voice. I don’t have to compare myself with anyone else anymore, I’m free. Free to be my dippy, hopeless, forgetful self.

I get YOU.

Which means I get me.

Love,
Me

PS – I tried to find photos for batshit and crazy but Microsoft clipart let me down. I think that's discriminatory. I blame the Republicans.


Have you told your brain you love it lately?

On the subject of bingles (not the Lara kind)...

Dear insurance company,

Yesterday, a parked car jumped out behind me and threw itself into my path.

There I was, minding my own business, reversing in the trusty Camry. At a snail’s pace. At dusk. Down an empty street. I was keeping my beady eye out the rear vision mirror for any pesky traffic that might turn up, when suddenly…

CRUNCH.

I had reversed slowly into a parked car. A suicidal Hyundai i30 LEAPT out from where it was parallel parked at the kerb, driverless, and THREW ITSELF at my rear bumper.

I clearly wasn't paying enough attention I swear, I tried to dodge it but it was DETERMINED to have a bingle with me. I suspect an insurance job, personally.

Yes, I’ve had my full license for two years (just). Yes, I’m almost 44. What’s it to ya?

No I haven’t taken any hallucinogenic drugs in the last 12 hours. God knows I’ve been tempted to reach for the Valium every minute of every hour occasionally this week but no.

Were there any contributing weather conditions? Yes - emotional weather of exhaustion and stress. No.

How would I describe the damage?

Frigging annoying.

Here’s my left rear bumper.

Here’s the suicidal Hyundai’s other car's bumper.

Can I put what happened in my own words? Only if you fancy having to go to counselling for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder afterwards.

Here’s my son's an artist’s impression of it though.

No, I'm not the artist.

Yes I know he's drawn himself in the driver’s seat.

No he doesn’t have a license. He’s 7.

Why, would it help if I said he was driving?

No?

Then no.

I suspect the random numbers of wheels on the cars involved might have been a contributing factor.

I did try to dodge. Really.

Have you ever had a bingle? Was it your fault?

**************************************************************

My five awesome things about this week after losing my shit:

• My son learned to spell 25 words this week
• My son told me likes hanging out with me
• I got to talk about alfalfa hair to people in the training I was facilitating today
• The term “snazbig” is catching on (OK so that one is a snazbig lie)
• It ended.

Now go check out SaturdayMorningOgreMum for more Lose Your Shit Friday goodness: http://saturdaymorningogremum.com/2012/05/lose-your-sht-friday-8.

Lose Your Shit Friday

I’ve worked in the city every weekday for the last two weeks.

Normally I work outside the home about three days each week. The other two days are spent working, but also catching up on all the household crap that needs to be kept track of. And taking deep breaths.

Today I lost my shit because I forgot to take my child to his regular gymnastics session last night.

And I only realised when his dad told me about it at 11.30am today. Thank god he did. Otherwise I’m likely to have woken up at 3am Sunday morning in a cold sweat of bad parenting terror yelling “FFS we didn’t take The Child to gymnastics!”

We could all do without that.

There have been other signs this week that things are getting on top of me.

Earlier in the week I spent an evening wondering where the roll of kitchen paper went. I KNEW I had some. I’d just been using it.

The next day I found it in the cupboard. Next to the saucepans. Why hadn’t I thought to look there? Because I never keep it in the cupboard. It’s always on the bench or in the pantry. I’d had it in my hand and put it in there while getting something else out.

I am seriously an idiot domestically challenged this week.

Several times this week I’ve been on the phone, and been gripped by a sudden need to check my calendar or make notes. I need my phone for this. Panic has wrapped its frigid fingers around my thumping heart. Shit! Where’s my phone? Oh god I’ve lost my phone!

Yes. That phone. THE ONE THAT I’M USING TO TALK TO SOMEONE. WHILE LOSING MY SHIT ABOUT HAVING LOST MY PHONE.

Last night I put my wine glass down and couldn’t remember where I’d put it.

I am an idiot clearly not coping this week.

So today I Lost My Shit. On the inside. Quietly.

Has anyone seen my phone?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Five Awesome Things about this week:

1.       My 72 year old Dad had a major op and came through it OK

2.       My son showed improvement in his spelling

3.       I laughed at a lot of blog posts

4.       I booked my place at the Problogger Training Event in October

5.       It ended!

Thanks to Miss Cinders from Saturday Morning Ogre Mum for the Lose Your Shit Friday linky stuff. Go check her blog out - http://saturdaymorningogremum.com. Share the LYSF love.

Are you smarter than a building? I'm not.

These last two weeks I’ve been in a building in the Melbourne CBD each day.

What I’m doing isn’t important (well of course it’s actually VITAL TO THE FUTURE OF MANKIND –  but not important to this blog post).

I want to tell you about the building I’ve been working in.

This building expects psychic abilities from its inhabitants. It’s one big intuitive intelligence test. It’s a VERY SMART BUILDING.

Seriously.

What’s missing from this wall, given that the wall is next to a lift?

And this one?

Yes there’s no button to call the lift, right?

Wrong.

Those big shiny gold decorations ARE the lift buttons.

Imagine, you start working in this building. On the first day, several of you poor shlubs stand around looking lost, searching for a way to call the damn lift. Someone smarter than you walks up and presses the upper side of one of these and miracle of miracles, that calls the lift.

Once you’ve passed (or in this case, failed) that intelligence test, and you get into the lift, you face another test. You have to put your access card against the sensor pad on this panel, before pressing a floor button.

Can’t see it? You know it’s there because you’ve seen people use it.

You try to find it.

This lift is currently under video surveillance and the security dudes ARE ALL LAUGHING AT YOU as you stand for a good minute wafting your card like an idiot in front of various parts of the wood panelling, to no avail. You fail this test too.

Oops.

Down to the Ground floor.

Back in the front door. At least you can SEE the security access pad for this one. See?
 

And so to the final indignity. Lurking in the glamorously dimly lit bathroom, are high quality porcelain sinks set in marble. Luxury! I hear you cry. Yes! Stunning. But what’s missing from this picture?

You guessed it. They have no visible way of turning the tap on.

It’s another test.

So you thrust your hands at various angles, trajectories and speeds into the sink in your own embarrassing, tragic version of toilet jazz hands, frantically searching for the magic action that will trigger the invisible sensor and GIVE YOU WATER.

Someone smarter than you comes in and catches you gesticulating madly at the porcelain and informs you that only Sinks 1 and 3 work.

You sheepishly move to Sink 1 and – another miracle – water gushes out and you get to wash your hands. You feel proud of yourself. You got a sink to work. How clever you are.

This building has tested me this week and found me wanting. I am not intelligent enough to call a lift, press a floor button or turn a tap on.

Yes, when I took the photos of the lift buttons and the invisible security sensor pad, I locked myself out. I am dumber than a building.

Are you smarter than the building you work in?

Not such a super moon

Tomorrow (Sunday May 6) at 1.35pm is a Super Moon. So it’s one of these..

… on steroids. It’s the biggest full moon of the year, apparently. This is because it’s going to be closer to Earth than at any other time this year.

Now, I’m not very pagan. I’m barely a pagan’s left elbow, frankly. But I do notice when the moon is doing funky things.

I get way more prickly than usual (who knew that was possible, right?!). I get teary, despairing; I feel a hideous gaping void inside me. I also tend to go on flights of unnecessarily melodramatic self-pitying literary fancy.

So for now I need to hunker down and repel the almost irresistible urge to impulsively fill this lunar-inspired void with food, wine, clothes that I’ll later hate, a new pet, or expensive kitchen gadgets.

I need to sit this astral dance out. It’s going to take a lot of self-control. This is something I’m not renowned for.

OK one wine might be OK.

And I still want a dog.

Wake me when it’s Monday…

Did you know... levitating socks?

After a couple of grumpy posts, I'm still grumpy. I'll get back to purposeful blogging soon.

In the meantime, there's this...

Did you know you can hold socks up on the wall with the power of your mind?

Well, now you do.

Enjoy the weekend, if you can.

If not, remember this too shall pass.

Mwahs to you.