A Dress: A Magical Thing Part II - When Carol Gainer made my Day

When I first conceived of this blog I had imagined that it would be about fashion. My first blog here was to lay the foundation for what my overly ambitious mind thought would be a fun, quirky, but still intelligent, sorry highly intelligent, means of illustrating a different approach to fashion. Mixing the old with the new, vintage with the latest trends, wait(!) this sounds familiar - it is every single fashion blog out there, twelve year olds are doing it! So, basically, what I really wanted was to show everyone how cool I was.

Little did I know that the old in mixing old and new would eventually become me. I no longer needed to trawl the 2nd hand shops of Cape Town in order to find that perfect vintage top, my sexy saggy 27yr old boobs would do. Adding to my discontent was the fact that I had recently come out of a relationship with a fat Namibian and as a consequence of lack of intelligent conversation and satisfying sex I had put on a few kilos. You see my blog was suppossed to be filled with fabulous pictures of me, looking fabulous in ensembles and dresses I had put together. Everyone was to think that it was, well, FABULOUS! Instead of feeling F for FABULOUS, I felt F for FAT. FAT. FAT!

There was no way I was going to parade my dimply ass in front of a camera, pretending I felt confident when I didn't. And, looking back I really wasn't even fat, just disappointed that the highlight of my former relationship was watching my ex eating McDonalds, in the car, while he was driving.

As a result of unforeseen weight gain and loss of confidence I just let my blog go wherever I felt like letting it go. And, for awhile, that was nowhere, because that's where I was going, sitting on my couch, watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - Du, du, du, du, DUM!

Clothes no longer made me feel what they used to. By this time I had amassed some pretty awesome dresses. I remembered really thinking of my collection as my own little treasure. The sentimental part of me imagined oneday passing it onto my daughter, or son, who I would dress up as a girl anyway.

Of especial value were my 2nd hand dresses. Not only were they cheap, but unique as well. When I would feel sad or down I'd put one on with some heels and prance around my flat. Yes, that's a normal thing to do! However, I had come to a point in my life where this all seemed a bit frivolous and pointless. I had certainly reached one of the epochs of growing up - Being SERIOUS.

So, I began behaving like an adult. I started looking for a job, eating healthy and exercising. I took an interest in such pressing matters as the environment and politics. How could I possibly wear pretty dresses when the rainforests were sad and politicians were being assholes? I even went as far as to clear out the contents of my cupboard. Not only getting rid of things I no longer wanted but certain items I had grown quite attached to.

This entire experience wasn't, however, all bad. For the first time in my adult life(and I use this term loosely) I was beginning to see that I wasn't only to be valued by how I looked and dressed. I'd become so attached and reliant on this idea of who I was, and in the process of continually trying to maintain this I had lost the plot. And, even though all these new ideas were mostly confusing, the most important thing was that I was thinking - like a big person!!!

Fast forward a year or so - I am in the dressing room at Woolworths, trying on dresses, of course! But instead of finding the frock that would epitomise the upcoming Summer of 2013, I find a grey hair. Really, now?!

...

                                                            

You know it's going to be a bad day when...

The sound of birds chirping makes you want to kill

The birds, of course! Because I haven't had a good night's rest and they decide to wake me up at 5 o' clock, in the morning. Afterwhich, it is impossible to fall asleep again. I spend the next hour ruing their existence and even contemplate reading To Kill a Mockingbird, until later I discover this is not a manual on how to kill birds that mock your existence, at 5 o' clock in the morning!!!

You're running late and you can only find one shoe

This is one of the greatest dilemmas of my life - how the fuck do you misplace one shoe? If it was the pair I could understand, but one! You see, as far as my logic goes you take your shoes off at the same time, in the same place. This is a mystery I've yet to solve. And, this invariably happens at the crucial time when I could just get to the train station on time not to be late for work. Things like this make me believe that evil really does exist and that shoes are agents of the devil. As least mine are!


You discover a big stain on the sweater you're wearing

But it's too late to go home now, because it took me 15minutes to find my shoe, in the dirty washing(the pile in the bedroom, not the lounge). So, I try to rearrange my scarf and contort my arms, to hide the offensive curry stain. All the while berating myself for continuing to eat whilst wearing clothes. I know by now that only about 80% of food I eat enters my mouth via cutlery, the rest I usually lick off my clothes or carpet, or whatever surface it manages to fall on. At this point I'm in such an unnatural position that passers-by stare, and I can see they're wondering what's wrong with me. I ask myself that question all the time.


As a result the following will probably occur during the course of the day:

(1) I will shout/scowl at innocent co-workers.
(2) I will cry, because my dirty sweater makes me realise how much I hate my job.
(3) Dissatisfaction with job will lead to emotional eating of KFC hot wings.
(4) I will cry, again, because I ate hot wings and now I am fat.

These days are called Mondays. God said, "Let there be Monday" and there was Monday. Sometimes when God needs a bit of a laugh he makes every day of the week a Monday. This also happens when a person or group of people piss off God . Thanks, atheists!

National Yawn Day

History

National Yawn Day was an initiative begun by a small group of like minded individuals, who believed in the far reaching effects and benefits of yawning. This group quickly grew in number and as a result the Society for the Benumbed Minds of Sullen Employees(SBMSE) was started. It was found that prolonged exposure to excessively bright lights, recycled air and mundane activities results in what is scientically known as the Zombie Effect. This is a medical condition where normally happy individuals turn into depressed homocidal lunatics. The society discovered that yawning was both a simple and efficient means of countering the Zombie Effect.  Studies conducted also revealed that increased yawning resulted in decreased death rates within the workplace. The amount of fatalities as a result of Death by Dorrito - A Russian Roullette style vending machine game, where desperate employees goad each other on by eating inordinate amounts of salty vending machine snacks often resulting in one or more employee dying from exploding, is snaggerringly less in corporations where yawning is encouraged. Since 1985 the SBMSE's mission has been to shed light on these workplace atrocities.

Medical Benefits

Apart from the obvious advantages of supplying oxygen to the body and helping to exercise facial muscles,  yawning has other significant benefits. Employees finding themselves in excessively boring situations, which as we know is the leading cause of death(often by suicide) of braincells, are encouraged to yawn. This is promoted in order to avoid passing out, as a result of boredom. It is often found that those creating the boredom will be so put off by yawning that they will cease talking and walk/storm off. In these situations we say the bigger the yawn the better.

Yawga

A form of yoga promoted in the corporate sector. When in a large group employees are encouraged to yawn in unison. Yawga is most often conducted during staff meetings.

Yawning - The Stigma

Even though the benefits of Yawning has been extensively researched and proven, stigma was still attached to those who chose to openly practice it. This was mainly experienced in the workplace and offenders are often senior management and obliviously boring people. In the late 90s the rise of anti-yawn websites and the degrading portrayal of yawners in the media had escalated to such a point where the SBMSE poured funds into a print campaign. This campaign depicted individuals, from varying backgrounds, caught in the act of yawning with the caption - Yawning : We All Do It printed below. The campaign went hand in hand with information sessions given at schools and community centres. Overall it was considered a success with yawning becoming more openly accepted.

Yawning as art

Since yawning has become much more widely accepted many have taken it on as a form of artistic expression.

Popular modes of expression -

Interpretive Yawn Dance
Painting
Poetry
It is also the subject of the hit Broadway Musical - All About the Yawns.

Outreach

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the campaign has been its Outreach Programmes. Yawning Upliftment Programmes are brought to disadvantaged communities where school children are taught the lasting benefits of yawning. This is especially useful to youngsters stuck in interactions with white liberals, who have unresolved guilt issues. Whereas, in the past, these children would have to sit through onesided discussions expounding the joys of our rainbow nation, a simple yawn is often all it takes to diffuse the situation. Yawning allows a freedom, unknown to these youngsters, from exposure to unwarranted and oppressive social interactions.

I need a break and chocolate

I've been feeling down and drained lately. It really has been a crazy few weeks and I'm quite happy to have gotten out of it, somewhat intact! I think : work + me getting older = a grumpy me :( It was my B-day last week and for some reason turning 27 was really getting to me. "This is really old," I thought, " I'm SO on the WRONG side of 25." But the day came around and to be honest, and with a little smile on my face, I can say it was wonderful. Everyone was so sweet and kind. My desk was filled with all sorts of lovely things that various people had gotten me. Typing this now I feel really silly for not taking a photo!!! Anyway, I don't think I'm the type of person who actually cares what I get, just the very fact that I'm getting something is huge for me.  I get excited and giggly just looking at a wrapped gift, but, luckily, this year, everything I got was something I loved.  However, because I'm as excitable as a puppy, eveything became somewhat overwhelming, in a good way. I suppose that much attention can get to one. Now this, no doubt, added to the exhaustion I'd been feeling for awhile and this week has been lovely because I'm starting to settle a bit. There's just been so much happening around me lately and I'd become so concerned with all of it that I decided I just needed to spend time alone, in my pjs, watching QI and eating!

If this is not the remedy for a worn out soul then I don't know what is. I have a plan of action, which includes making yummy food and eating it, with no sense of decorum or shame! I'm excited because one of the gifts I received was a pestle and mortor, something I've wanted for ages, and I'm planning to try out some recipes. This post is really just a heads up as I'm going to record my food exploits/disappointments(hopefully there won't be many) and put it up here. However, because I'm very good at making plans, but not so much at keeping to them it'll be interesting to see what comes of this weekend :)

See you Monday!

Vinger Alleen

I didn't know that being single bothered me; until I was. Not so very long ago being female, 21 and unmarried was a fate few woman wished upon themselves. Think Jane Austen, think Ms. Bates - cringe. Although 21 is no longer the put- you-on-the-shelf age, the word Ms. with its serpentine ssssssss at the end has a sting to it, or as Keats puts it "..the very word is like a bell/To toll me back from thee to my sole self!". Being single means there is no thee, but there always seems to be the idea/dream/hope of one hovering in the sub-conscious, flittering and tittering where it wishes. In fact, the concept of being single seems to be tied up with the lack of something and someone else. Something being a relationship. Someone being, most likely, a man you've settled for. I guess, to me, singleness in it's definition appears to be conceived of as a negative somewhat unhappy state. In no way does it have to be or is it all the time, but it does seem to be something that is viewed at as a phase to be enjoyed at a certain time and place in one's life. It's limbo, you can't stay there forever, it's either heaven or hell!!!

Now for some hell is a better state than limbo - it maybe shit but it has a certain certainty about it like, "This is shit but we're in it together".

Writing this, just now, made me realize that I've been single for over a year. And, for much of this time, I've been attempting to avoid and disguise this fact. Filling my time and occassionally my bed out of this idea of loneliness I'd been cultivating within myself for a long time. Singleness was the albatross around my neck and being the delusional, little go-getter that I can be, I was NOT to be had the better of!

So, in thinking I was kicking the shit out of singleness, I was, in fact, kicking the shit out of myself. By trying to avoid being alone and attributing meaning to such meaningless things as sex, words, bumping & grinding, I, myself, was feeding into the fact and feeding the notion that singleness is a sorry, deplorable state to be in. Yesterday I read a quote by the recently deceased Gore Vidal, "Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself". It made me chuckle purely because it is so true and makes so much sense. Logical, right? However, there seems to be a major chasm between what I intellectually know to be true and what maybe called my heart and my sex organs. For some reason I imagined that sex meant intimacy, trust and maybe even love. It appears that the albatross was getting the better of me.

My actions were fueled by the fact that I was alone and was doing everything in my power not to be alone, at the same time never admitting to myself that I was really fucking bothered by being alone. I felt that by admitting I was lonely and wanted a relationship meant I had now become old, pathetic and incredibly uncool. Whereas I was supposed to be young, unpathetic and incredibly cool. However, what I was doing never made me feel that way. I was often heartsore and hurt. Confused as to why someone I felt I had made a connection with could leave my life - POOF!!!

So, with little else left to do, I gave into the albatross.

I started being nice to it. I bought it coffee, watched tv with it and we had long discussions together. In so doing I realized that the albatross really wasn't that bad. That, perhaps, its intense desire to pluck my eyes out was fueled by my own animosity towards it.

And, even though we have our ups and downs our relationship has much improved. I've even realized that there are positive aspects to being single, one of them being not having to share things!! :)

Warm Water Dissolves

You stand, elbow deep in soapy scum

the wreckage of the day flows beneath you.

every bite,

every crumb,

washed
            
              away.


"So simple," you think.

so, you take your sore, sore heart

soak it,

wring it out.


Warm water dissolves the pain;
it makes your heart beat again.

Insurance Policy

I've never had enough money to afford insurance. In fact, I've never owned anything worth insuring. Current state of my life: 26yrs old,  living with parents, babysitting for money. A sad state of affairs if I were to dwell on it too long. However, a recent visit from my parents' pastor showed me that insurance needn't be expensive, it is as simple as a state of mind.

Imagine me, in my current mental unrest, sitting amongst those, who seem all too eager to convert me and to my surprise believing that it would take no real effort at all. I am told I should believe "just in case".

Just in case?! Really?

In case there is a God. In case the world implodes and my non beliefs aren't a comfort.

I was extremely insulted by "just in case", because I honestly believed I deserved a better, more well thought out argument as to why I should believe. Did they really think I was that lazy? That when given the easy way out I just would? Their belief strategy would require no real effort on my part, no commitment, in actual fact, no belief at all. It would be the illusion of a belief.

It's the cheapest insurance policy I've encountered yet, pay it off with some self deception and you've made it into heaven. Seriously, such a cheap payment makes God seem cheap. Poor God!