Talking to children

[Reading out her childcare report card to me]
Mum: But she must always remember to speak to a child at their level. What does that mean?
Mush: That means you talk to the kid like an adult. You're supposed to talk to the kid like a kid.
Mum: Oh, do I?
Mush: Yeah, but don't worry -it's a very specifically Asian thing to do.
Mum: Huh. And you? How did I talk to you as a child?
Mush: Like an adult.

Actually now that I think about it, I do that a lot too- talking to toddlers and babies about definitions and concepts. You will never find me in front of a pram cooing 'it's a teddy-weddy-weddy-bear!' Maybe it's genetic.

Just smoke the damn cigarette already

And so lately everyone has been pointing out vanilla I am. And you don't have to really know me that well to know just how much I hate this. Just because I'm not snorting things up my damn nose every night and sleeping with Tom, Dick and Harry at the same time doesn't mean you should put me in this damn goody-goody box. I resent this damn box.

RR: something something drugs.
Mush: Oh that's not how it is.
RR: How would you know? As if you've ever taken drugs.
Mush: ........
RR: Look at you in all your vanillaness.
Mush: [glaring at her from my stupid nerdy glasses] Oh yeah? And how can you tell?
RR: [exasperated] You're a good girl. You just are. You never would.
Mush: I am not a good girl! (if I punch you in the head I think you would stop calling me that)
RR: There's nothing wrong with being good you know? It's okay.

RR really knows how to push my damn buttons. And of course she's right- recently I'm going out of my way to be reasonable and sensible. I'm sleeping at ten. I'm not showing up late for anything. I'm not drinking.. at all, I've turned into some sort of ghastly teetotaller. I don't throw Veruca Salt like tantrums. I mean for Og's sake- my hair is a nice nominal black colour and not the candy floss pink that I originally wanted - in short it's like I've been dialled back to minus five.

Which must be nice for my parents. I'm not so sure how I feel about this.

And that might go a long way to explaining why I'm constantly craving cigarettes lately. I want to pick them up and twirl them in my fingers, I want to take a damn cigarette break in front of my work and not give a shit what anybody walking past thinks, I want to smell them on my hands when I lift them to my face and most of all I want to inhale. The hilarious thing is I don't smoke, not really. I am well aware that this is my self-destructive streak rising to the surface like a kraken heading for the buffet.

I guess if chaining out my window is the most rebellious thing I do in the next few months, I truly am vanilla- I'll give up and own that title.

Stop for a moment

My eyes are so wide like you reached into my head and turned on a light inside- Be Mine, David Gray.

I'm standing here on the street corner, four blocks away from my house. And I can't explain the stillness, I don't have the writing capacity to explain stillness. My feet hurt and I'm tired but that's ok. Because the world is so quiet that all I can hear is the gentle tapping on my keypad and my own footsteps in the leaves and I think that if this is as good as it gets, for five minutes, for ten, for fifteen, then that should be all I ever ask for. Momentary stillness.

Priorities, priorities.

Well see here's proof that I'm alive and eating cake. Cake with dessicated coconut so maybe not so much alive.

I guess I'll return when I have something concrete to say. At this point I feel like if I analyse my life, I'm going to find a gap and poke a hole right through it. I am that superstitious. Or maybe I'm just too old to care about everything and everyone all the time. Right now, I'm focusing quite a bit of energy on one person and I'm finding it reallly damn hard to spread myself around when [certain] friends have mental crises. And you know? that's strange to say even for me, if you call for me I'm the first one out the door for you- no questions asked and lately I have a hard time picking up the phone or even just summoning the energy to roll out of bed. [In fact, my bed is eyeing me now but so are my sink of dishes. The dishes win.]

I'm not twenty one anymore and nowhere is this more evident than my inability to give people equal time. As Coconat so eloquently put it "We're too old for this shit. And we're too old to deal with crap that's really not that important."

And so it is. I was talking to my mum about ND and she as always shoots straight from the hip.
Mum: SB once said to me that you always put your friends before him.
Me: He said that to you? Why the fk would he say that to you? When the hell? What the heck!
Mum: Are you still doing that? Maybe you should reconsider doing that.
Me: [defensive] well it's true. I don't admit that it's not true. I knew it, he knew it. It was the way things were done. Friends are forever and boyfriends are.. transient. Case in point. I'd just like to point out that if I leaned on him hard, where would I be? I'd be Wiley Coyote'd all over the ground.
Mum: Aren't you tired? Don't you just want to lean and be taken care of? Would it not make your life easier?
Me: You brought me up to be completely self-sufficient and independent. What are you asking of me?
Mum: Maybe too much for your own good.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I think I'm just in a roundabout way trying to say that my priorities are getting a total reconfiguration and I'm still in the process of trying to figure it out myself. Which is not really the reason I'm neglecting the holy moly out of this blog.

I swear I'll be good and offer you more cake pictures. Amateur cake photographs. There'll at least be a lot of those coming up

Try thinking before you speak

Betty asked for more posting, so hi Betty! *waves*

--

I was absorbed in creating a mixtape on the computer and he was sitting behind me just watching me mess around, when I noticed the time was getting close to midnight so not moving my eyes away from the screen, I felt around for his face and said absently:

You know I love you but you have to go soon.

Uhm. It took me about several beats to realise what I just said and then the room went completely silent in a death pall. Who the hell makes random love declarations two weeks in while multi-tasking? Me apparently. Oh I fail sometimes, I really do.

I swivelled around in horror and almost knocked him off the seat in the process.

"I.. uhhhh. OH MY GOD. I didn't mean that. I mean I like you a lot but that's not what I meant. I was distracted. I say that to everyone. I tell everyone I love them, it's not personal. I don't know why I said that. ..... uhhhhhhhhhh....." [smooth Mush smooth! You missed out on an incredible public relations career!] By this time I'm quite sure my face is fire engine red.

He starts to laugh, he's finding it hilarious. "Should I just pretend I didn't hear that?"

Dumbdumbdumbdumbdumb! Argh! Stupid mixtape! "But it's true. I say I love everyone." This is sounding lame even to my ears, but it's TRUE. "Forget it! It didn't happen!."

I don't even know if there's a moral to this other than: Dear God, I need to relearn when to start and stop talking.