Life in six words

I've been tagged by Diddums, to describe my life in six words. Keen to avoid overshooting and writing something too pompous, I checked out what other people had written. Some wrote something poignant like "Her days were filled with yearning". Others wrote funny things such as "Had an epiphany then lost it". I toyed for a while with "Just wants to be left alone", but then worried about sounding too cynical. And what to say after everyone leaves me alone and I'm desperately lonely. So in the end, I settled for this:

She longs for dogs every day. 

I'm supposed to tag six people. I think Sigsy would like this, so I'm tagging her, Chaucer's Bitch, the Pixy Princess, Liisa, KTB, and the Baroque Princess, who shall have to baffle us all by doing it in Swedish. Phew. I really struggled there to think of six people who read this blog.

Beaten, stabbed, burned

I’m not sure which I find scarier; lying naked and face-down in front of a stranger, or the plinky-plonky music and fragrant candles that so often accompany this, but after 6 days with a headache I was willing to try anything. First, the “therapist” pushed me around the table, pressing my ribs and prodding my spine. Then he stuck needles in my back and left me lying there like a half-eaten party porcupine. Upon his return, he burned me with I know not what, telling me with a cackle how mothers in Japan threaten their naughty children with this treatment. But the strange thing is that although I left the clinic with my head throbbing and shoulders bruised, when I woke up the next day, the headache was gone (ish).

You can run…

On Saturdays, I teach a four-hour class and then a three-hour class, with 30 minutes in between for lunch. It’s a long day and my only desire for the short lunch break is to find a quiet spot to eat my sarnie and gather my thoughts. So when Screechy Colleague asked me where I spent lunchtime, I made vague, discouraging noises about “only half an hour”, “copies to make” and “hiding somewhere on the 6th floor”. Needless to say, she hunted me down the next week. The following week, I hid in a different part of the office and managed to avoid her. The next week, I accidentally rustled a sandwich wrapper at the wrong moment, and she popped her head over the partition “to see if it was you”. This week, I tried a different spot, far from the door, photocopier or any other piece of office equipment anyone in their right mind might want to use. I sat, hunched behind a partition, eyes darting back and forth, and ears twitching, removing my sandwiches from their cellophane in the style of someone handling explosives. I heard footsteps approaching. I froze, sandwich halfway to my mouth. “Ah, there you are!!”

Pyscho

I usually identify with the supposedly psycho character in films. In an attempt to spend quality time together “as a family” (a phrase which struck terror into my adolescent heart), my parents took my sister and me to see Fatal Attraction when we were teenagers. The plot did little to convince me of the value of the family unit and less to soothe my burgeoning sense of injustice at the humiliations visited upon women both in Hollywood and in life in general. The Michael Douglas character was an unfaithful liar who had shagged a woman he hardly knew, taken little interest in using contraception, and then refused to face the consequences. Glenn Close, on the other hand, was single, and thus guilty of nothing more than perhaps carelessness. She was also burdened with the prospect of a lifetime of supporting a child. What, then, was the problem with demanding that he take responsibility for his part in the horizontal tango that led to her pregnancy? I’d have boiled his bunny too, the fucker.

Today I watched a thought-provoking film in which a mousy, submissive secretary ended up becoming an animal rights activist, embezzling money from her employer, and trying to stab her neighbour. And the thing is, I was with her all the way.

Some fly by day...

Timorous Beast does not like flying. For his birthday, I tricked him into getting in a helicopter and doing a night flight over Tokyo. Sorry about the shaky photos – his little paws were sweaty and trembling. We also went to a posh French restaurant and enjoyed the most expensive repast in our meal-having history.

Disappointment

Timorous Beast came home a little later than usual.

“I was hungry, so I went to the noodle place for some dinner.” He announced, by way of explanation.

“Oh yeah? How was it?”

“Pretty good actually. They gave me bukkake”

Before male readers start writing to ask for the address of this noodle place, go here and scroll down to the section about cold noodles. Sorry about that.

Clumsy

It was just after the pasta, and during the crosswords that we stared bickering about who was clumsier around the house.

“You drop things and crash around too, you know.” He said, bottom lip protruding.

“I know, but I think you do it more. Maybe because you’re left-handed.”

“Bollocks. You do it too.”

“Yes, I do, but what I’m saying is that you do it more. It’s a fact that left-handed people are more likely to have accidents with machinery and the like.”

He waved his hand, “No way. I don’t.”

And with that, he dropped his pen on the floor. He avoided my eyes as he picked it up.

“What have you got for seven down, then?”