No Pictures

My partner got a text message tonight. One of his close friends, confessing her "feelings" for him. It was like getting kicked in the guts. Of course he showed it to me straight away, but still, there either has to be something seriously wrong with the confessor or the relationship she's ignoring for something like this to happen. This is surely the most annoying thing about being with someone so much more attractive than I am who refuses completely to ever get married, is that I may just have to tolerate this sort of thing for the rest of our relationship. Despite six years together and a four year old son, some dizzy bitch still thinks it's ok to bare her little feelings to the guy who shares my bed.

Sorry about the lengthy time away, I've spent it running and practising. My songs are going really well but I'm not sleeping and I've had one fairly horrendous panic attack, which was only so awful because I had no idea what was happening. It's 3 am, and usually I would have been asleep for five hours or so, but recently all ability to sleep has wandered out the window, hand in hand with my ever-tenuous grip on reality. I'm starting to dread the rain, knowing we'll be stuck inside. Today was sunny and the only time I spent inside the house was to visit the bathroom. Tomorrow it might rain and tonight I've picked my arms raw. Every few hours I swear I can smell something burning and rush to check everything electrical in the house.

I'm starting to think that the reason I'm so upset tonight about something so small is that I know our relationship is pretty much over. We have no sex life, which is apparently something important that people in a relationship should have. Who knew? He is attractive, kind, funny, bursting with talent, loving, devoted, all those other good adjectives, and yet..... nothing. I think about holding him or I think about letting him go, and it all amounts to the same thing. There's just nothing there, in the place where there used to be something, and it makes me feel really really fucking old.

It's spring here. The garden is full of flowers and the house is full of moths.

I like people too much or not at all

Back on the river track, and exhausted, heroic, in agony. Life is not as shit as it was. I've concluded that I need two cups of coffee and six kilometres of running each day in order to live. One of these requirements is easier to fulfil than the other, but I'm muddling through.

I haven't fallen through any parts of our floor yet this month. Huuuuuuuuuge improvement on last month.

I have all three songs picked for my audition. O Del Mio Dolce Ardor by Gluck, Widmung by Schumann (glorious), and The Desire for Hermitage by Samuel Barber, my favourite composer, the last song of his Hermit Songs, my favourite song cycle. It's fucking hard.

I'm getting more and more scared that boyfriend and I won't see out this year together, and I'm perpetually swinging between one state of terror and sorrow and another of relief and hope. Sometimes I'm just really curious to see which side will win. Then I feel like a callous bitch.

I bought the sexiest swimsuit ever today. It makes me look like a pin-up girl. I'm thinking of embroidering "You're Welcome" on the back. Perhaps a little much for my son's weekly swimming lesson, but seriously, my norgs never looked so good. I felt edible.

I hope you guys are good. Spring is prancing around shirtless here, handing out margaritas. It seems like every tree's been ruthlessly attacked by novelty oversize blossom cannons. It's hard to be down when the world is smiling so loudly, and bestowing lovely things upon you. And when you have fabulous, pleasing, well-wrangled breasts. Ok I'm going.

Much love

xxx

Tips for giving up sugar

Here's what I do, and why I do it. First of all, there are so many reasons to give up sugar, all of which you can find online. Here are my favourites:

1. It stops you being hungry. Whenever I've given up sugar completely, as in nothing with anything ending with -ose in it anywhere, I have literally forgotten to eat. After a week or two I generally re-introduce fruit but I find even a tiny bit is enough to satisfy my previously insatiable sweet-tooth. Giving it up for even a little while will reset your hunger cues, and your desire for sweetness.

2. Skin. After two or three weeks, all blemishes, blotchiness, blackheads and oiliness - gone. Normally my skin is completely disgusting. Every pore on my sizeable nose is a blackhead no matter how hard I scrub. My forehead is constantly oily, so much so that I blot with toilet paper every time I use the bathroom. I still get horrific breakouts regularly, and the area around my nose is always blotchy and red. If I don't have sugar, I look like I've been airbrushed, and my usually swarthy, thick skin is delicate and soft, like a wee babe. It's fucking eerie, but awesome, and knowing it's going to happen in a bit over a week is keeping me going at the moment.

3. You stop getting sick. Sugar fucks up your immune system by leaching vitamins and minerals from whatever else you eat in order to be properly digested. Which brings us to....

4. ....when it is digested, it turns into fat. Most specifically, lower belly fat. If you have a little pooch down there that won't budge no matter how much you exercise or starve yourself, it's a little collection of sugar. It will go away if you stop eating it. The good thing is, you can eat however much of anything else you want, as long as it doesn't have added sucrose, fructose, many of the other -oses, and corn syrup in it. Corn syrup is the DEVIL.

So I gave up sugar last year and lasted for two months. In that time I lost about seven or eight kilos, but felt so much better mentally that it almost became beside the point. I fell off the wagon after being too shy to request a sugar-free meal at a friend's wedding, and once I'd had a little taste, it was all downhill from there. It's weird that a little food additive can be so pervasive, and therefore take so much courage to overcome. I have a few strategies for success, and hopefully I can adhere to them more fully this time around :)

1. Tell EVERYONE that you're doing it. And then remind them all the time. I used the excuse that I was trying to overcome my dependence on anti-depressants, and I was told that sugar can affect mood stability, which it can. If you are chronically depressed it can really lift your mood, once you overcome the withdrawal stage.

2. Read labels. Sugar is in everything, and in really unexpected (for me at least) places. Stock powder. Pretty much anything processed at all. If you get rid of all of it the cravings will stop sooner.

3. Give in to other temptations, at least at the beginning. Give yourself a break! Last night I felt like shit so I made pasta bake for dinner, when I would normally never touch the stuff.

4. Cravings are shit, so be armed for them at all times. Travel with food on you, nuts or seeds or other little sugar free snacky things. Anything with fake sweetener in it will make you hungrier, and mean the detox process takes longer. Last time I saved artificially sweetened things for emergencies, when I knew I was going to cave if I didn't have something naughty.

Bear in mind that if you do this, it doesn't have to be forever. Even for a couple of weeks will help to reset your tummy if you have a problem with binge eating (like me), and will calm your crazies and clear your skin.

Much love xx

Murder and Mayhem in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory of DOOM

Ann-fucking-Margret. Am I right or am I right.

I ate everything that wasn't pinned down today, but I managed to not murder my co-worker (although I imagined him dying in many creative ways, and felt no remorse, not even a smidge of remorse about my remorselessness), which was a pretty fair deal really, as I'm almost certain I won't be able to get my hands on macarons or a food processor with which to make half-decent pesto when I'm in prison for the rest of my life for ridding the planet of Fucknuckles McGee. But perhaps if he's dead and gone I won't be so hungry any more and I'll have no need of macarons OR pesto. You know, it's this kind of moral dilemma that prevents me from sleeping or parenting effectively. The world is a confusing place.

Anyway. That's all that happened. I worked. I ate. I didn't kill anyone. (SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN, F.McG, AND SEE YOU TOMORROW FOR ANOTHER TRULY EXCELLENT CO-WORKING EXPERIENCE.) But shit man. Perhaps I should try kicking sugar again. This is getting seriously fucking ridiculous. I'm crazy and ravenous all the time, like I'm deficient in some serious brain-stem lubricating minerals, or I'm a sugar junkie selling my arse and my sanity for a fix. I think when I stopped drinking that part of my brain that was an alcoholic just hopped on over to the next best thing and I became a rampaging sweet-tooth. Maybe if I quit sugar the addictive part of my brain will turn me into an exercise junkie! HAHAHAHAHA!!!
No seriously. That could happen, right?  Right? Dammit.

Running, A's and Flappers

Finally got my arse back on the river track yesterday, with babe in tow, and we had a great time. I inherited one of those awesome mega jogging pram-beasts that holds a ten-year-old that is completely useless for anything other than exercising (as in, it won't fit in a car or on public transport, or around any combination of seating in a cafe, or a moderately crowded supermarket) and plonked kiddo down in it after piling layer upon layer of clothing on him because I was so scared my need for exercise + my inability to get up early = baby gets a horrible nasty cold because it's the middle of bloody winter and I'm running full pelt along a river. I had some chivalrous, if downright fucking hilarious, assistance from the local carwash guys pumping up the beast's tires (it's on a funny angle and my inflation attempts obviously looked like I had no idea what I was doing, so two of the more attractive ones [Sri Lankan and West African - I live in a cool area] sauntered over to 'help', which just meant doing it all for me and teasing babe, which elicited many smiles from all involved, they even watched him buckle himself back in and farewelled us with shouts and huge waves, it pretty much made my day, erm.....anyway) and then we were off. I picked a route that wouldn't kill me and ended in a playground, passing not one single playground on the way which would have infuriated little babe, and we were all very content. The hardest part was discussing what species of shark would possibly survive if it found its way into the river (bull shark, obvs) while I was trying not to die from lack of air after not running for so long, and for not ever having run whilst pushing a twenty kilogram human and a small collection of apples in front of me. Good times.

Unfortunately, today I felt horrible on the way to my singing lesson, like perhaps I'll just call her and cancel and lose my forty bucks kind of horrible, but I rocked up anyway armed with an excuse as to why I was going to be so terrible that I didn't even get a chance to use because I wasn't terrible, I was great. And I kept thinking to myself, imagine how much better I would have been if I had actually practised this week. I got my top 'A' back, which is fucking fantastic. It's still about a third lower than the note every soprano needs to be comfortable singing, but it's a tone higher than I could sing last week, and I am fucking jubilant. What ho, old lad! Fuck yes.

I also picked the first song for my audition. I want to do an entirely new set of songs, not just for the novelty, but I'm also afraid of slipping back into old habits by recycling old repertoire. I think I would have to spend a lot of time unlearning things. Here is a recording of it, not the best example, but this girl is so nice to look at and I love her tone.

So I'm not sure what to say about flappers. They're cool.

You are awesome.

Winsome as fuck

Hey there.

So things went from weird to worse, but are now looking up. Kind of. I don't even know. I had to stop purging because I got hit by a bolt of mysterious mind-lightning, so I gained back all the weight I had lost this year (and then a little bit more, isn't that always the way) and I still continue to be surprised getting dressed each day in clothes that don't quite fit properly.

The lightning I'm still trying to wrap my head around. A little over a month ago I decided to go back to music school, and I'm not sure why, only that I mustmustmustmustmust. So a firm promise to stop purging this time forever with absolutely no exceptions followed, but this time it stuck. So even if I've fucked up my voice completely and never get my top notes back, at least this new decision gave me that. Purging is the most fucked thing of all the fucked things ever. I just looked to my right where my son plonked a pile of old cassette tapes next to the computer today and the only label facing me is 'Regurgitator'. If I was the type to type "lol" I would type it now. I'm not, though, but you know. Apt.

So I'm dragging my fat arse to singing lessons once a week with a soprano only a couple of years my senior with two enormous doglike cats who is slowly whipping me back into shape before my audition in December. It's pretty strange, since I swore off classical singing almost ten years ago now, but it feels so good to be working towards something, and not just slaving away for something just above minimum wage in a chocolate store and polishing off an Arts degree with my usual level of dedicated halfarsed-ness. I'm trying to believe that my body can be an instrument again, even after all I've put it through, but sometimes it's all clear to me and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I stuff myself so I can no longer move. Sometimes I walk for miles and miles. I long for sleep, for solitude, for time to work, for the motivation to get out of bed before eight am, for my tongue just naturally being in the right position and my larynx staying the fuck down. I'm trying to make peace with all these things, with every contradiction, every frustration, every episode of angry tears. So is this life? Is coming to terms with it all how people live? And if I have to ask that, how far do I have to go?

Anyway. Here's a picture of Nellie Melba, Australia's first prima donna. She's like me, only winsome.

Love youse.

Scraping it all back together.