Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I stood in front of the mirror after blow drying my hair today and suddenly decided to cut it. With scissors. So I took a hank in hand and began slicing through the almost black strands until the thick lock came away. The wisps left falling into my eyes, dark and shiny. I looked up through them, into the mirror, still grasping the thick ponytail in my left hand and wondered at what I'd done.

I walked out to show Bingley, hank in hand, scissors in other while he looked at me confusedly. "Did you cut your hair?" was the answer to my lifted eyebrow, followed by "You look 12, maybe 13". And I kind of do. Fringe falling into my eyes, dark and smooth and shiny and hair longer than it has been in years, curling down my back.

I'm not sure exactly what possessed me. It wasn't a bubbling idea in the background that came forth, it was an eyes in the mirror decision, to change something. Be someone different for a while. Do something ridiculous. I had spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, and then paying bills and organising salary sacrificing paperwork when something inside me snapped. Needed release, as I calmly sharpened my scissors before setting about to hack away at the most visible feature I've ever had.

When the shock had worn off, and the humour and delicious impish delight at having done something so reckless kicked in, I took a mandatory selfie and sent it to a friend, giggling as I did so, because the ridiculousness had set in. And the response from her, and later facebook friends was that I had somehow managed to cut my hair into the style of Zooey Deschanel, one of the original manic pixie dream girls.

I was never really that girl. I didn't have the chance. I've been a grown up since the day I became a mother at 22 and I think, sometimes, that shes' still in there trying to get out - not satisfied with sensibility and Mom jeans.

Over the last few days, many of my friends have been posting old pictures on facebook. Highschool and college photos of shiny happy people in the prime of their lives. And the comment from so many, as they looked at pictures of their past selves, was that they wished they could look like that again, be as free as that again. But when I look at the unsure girl of then, and the way she dressed and how self conscious she was, always, I don't want to be her again.

I want to be the girl who buys a ludicrously short dress because of the ruffles and the way the fabric feels on her skin. Who buys a belt of bells to give it shape and wears it barefoot. I want to be the girl that buys an acid green shirt dress, and wears it to work with patent nude pumps and a tied leather belt. I want to be the girl who wears a suit with a pencil skirt and a purple top tucked into the waistband with very high courts. I want to be the girl who wears shoes with buckles and deadly sharp points, that clack across tiles.

But most of all I want to be the girl who wears those things and isn't self conscious. Who not only cuts her hair into thick bangs that can't just be washed out and hidden away, but puts in a sparkly head band and grows long lost dimples in her cheeks at the very thought of them. Who demands to have her photo taken instead of hiding behind her friends. I want to be me.

A very boring week. Because I write about those now too. Apparently.

Because it is school holidays, the children had their annual visit with their grandparents and Bingley and I sat on the couch and wondered at the silence. For a very short period of time anyway before trying to fill it. I still had to work all week, and weekend, but we managed to do some other things too.

The first night we went and saw The Hobbit and drank slushies that gave me headspin and ate popcorn until I couldn't feel my lips. It was good and I enjoyed the Hobbit very much. I am thinking of taking the Elfling for an encore as I think she'd like it but it may be yet just a little scary. We'll see. Plus the idea of a night out with just her is appealing.

After the movie we walked around Southbank for a while and sat down at a Spanish bar to eat tapas. Fun ambience and a jug of tasty Sangria mixed with the sultry night as we people watched and the bougainvilea bower swayed listlessly in what was left of the breeze. After dinner, having eaten too much, we wandered through the park to the beach where hundreds of others were still swimming and I peeled off my shoes and pulled up my jeans and waded in tipsily, wanting nothing more than to dive right in. The only thing that stopped me was that my underwear was sheer, otherwise I would have jumped. Bingley was much more sensible than I though and promised we would come back the next night.

So Monday, after work, when I was overtired and overworked and underpaid, I got changed into my riding gear, we snapped our new $10 LED torches to our bikes and we rode all the way to the city, across the Goodwill Bridge and back down into Southbank to the pools. Unlike every other day of this new year, it was actually blowing quite a bit, with the wind racing along the river and losing all of her heat. Remembering the strong pull of desire from the previous night however I forced myself to strip off my slightly sweaty clothes down to my bikini and jump into the water that was actually blissfully warm. Lapping at shoulders as we bobbed around watching the city lights and listening to the sounds of everyone else splashing. The wind as it blew across the surface raising gooseflesh and causing me to shiver so much that it was not quite as long as expected before we were back on our bikes and riding home in the night.

Bingley and I have never ridden our bikes together in Brisbane before and it was a revelation. Wide, well maintained bike paths that snaked under and over bridges that seem so much bigger when you're whooshing past on your own steam. On arriving home my knees and shoulders hurt, but the grin of self satisfaction and spontaneity and doing something fun and active was elixir enough to fall peacefully to sleep not long after.

Wednesday night I stopped at Ikea on the way home and bought a new bookshelf. It was very big and heavy and getting it into the car I used all of my grade 10 Physics to actually lever it in without breaking something. We then had the fun of sitting on the floor and putting it together, which is probably the real reason we own so much Ikea furniture - it's just a really big lego set.

Thursday we went out for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. It was ok.

Friday we had a big fight. I cried. We made up. I slept badly.

Saturday we woke up and the sun was shining and my room was full of light. I was snuggled up in my blankets as the airconditioning rumbled through the vents. After finally climbing out of bed and into the shower, we made our way to GoMA to the new APT exhibit.

Side note - I am lucky that I was brought up in a family that appreciated art and took the time to take children to museums and galleries and to explain it as well. Some art doesn't need explaining. Some art is just pretty and nice to look at, but art that speaks to you other than just being pretty - learning to appreciate that is a true gift.

Anyway, the Asia/Pacific triennial art exhibit at the Queensland Art Gallery is one of my favourite things to experience. The last exhibit in 2010 was spectacular and there were pieces there that made my heart hurt. Some that made my eyes sting and some that pulled my stomach out of my chest .I loved it. Loved experiencing it. Loved visiting it on my own. Loved taking others with me to experience it. The stag of globes still rates as one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. So of course my expectations were high, and I take disappointment badly.

I was not disappointed.

From the first moment of walking in, I knew I would not be disappointed. Some things of course I just glanced over politely, missing, or not caring about their meaning. Others had me spellbound, sitting and watching, sometimes nose right up to the glass or the paint or the wood, just to see every last tiny detail. To try and work out how as well as what and why.

Here are some of my favourites, and reasons why you should go too.

I liked these. I empathise.

This is techinically spectacular and utterly unnerving. So incredibly beautiful and so ugly at the same time. My phone has done nothing to capture the beauty of the colours or the technique. 

String theory. I followed each line to its completion. I loved the wobbles. String theory needs wobbles.

The yellow room 

Black and white. Texture and light. I was wearing a red dress and the reflected light from me gave the painting colour. I was profoundly moved by it.

Terrible picture of a stunning series by Michael Cook. Amazing.

This is a photograph taken of the sky in a mirror. The mirror is made from polished meteorite. When I realised what I was looking at my heart jumped a little. So spectacularly beautiful and so simple - seeing the sky from the sky. 

Large installation piece of cities that raise to they sky. Worth looking at close up to see all the little details. 

I usually am not much interested in the short cinema offerings at these exhibitions and wander out after a polite few minutes of trying to look interested. This one was not like that. 9 minutes that sucked the breath from my chest. I know it won't affect everyone like that, but it's worth sitting down for just to appreciate the cinematography. 

Whimsical Japanese print. Ethereal.

Farsi. I love that the room bent the more I looked at it to become a 3 dimensional thing. 

I am not sure why this moved me so much. It's massive and it is beautiful. Part of a larger series by an Indigenous artist. One of the bags reminded me of the Giants in the BFG. They seemed perfect for snatching up little children. 

One of those spectacularly beautiful wow creations that you don't need to be a critic to enjoy. I wanted to visit there in the clouds this temple. Live there. Home of the air nomads. 

Parade of the tiny glass animals. Intricate, refractory and flowing like water. 

Menacing shapes in the art gallery over the water. I loved the reflections and the menace and the beauty all mixed in together.

Mind reader

When I was a teenager, a friend used to say I could read her mind - as if I somehow had the ability to poke around in her head, and sometimes see things that even she couldn't. A close friend from a few years ago remarked something similar - that I had free access to thoughts that had never been verbalised. It was always a privilege to see inside someone, an intimacy of which few can boast.

The full moon was bright over the road as I drove into work that night and climbed into my chair, bare feet tucked up under me as I scrolled through the inside of other people's heads yet again. Silently assessing, appraising, categorising. Most of the heads I looked at were old, and the memories of a lifetime were gradually fading away. I wondered at some, as I scrolled past a dark spot, the herald of loss of a bundle of neurons, of what memory had gone with them. What moonlit walk, what tragic loss, what phone number or frisson of potential had held its place in memory.

I continued to work hard that night, steadily, playing my part in my little warm room as the patients came and went. Until he came in and I looked at his brain. His brain was young. Far younger than the brains I am used to seeing, a brain full of all the things that a young, fit, healthy, clever young person should have. Or it was once, before the accident that brought him into my care in the first place.

I wasn't in my little dark room as I looked at his head. I was in the bright room. The frigidly cold room to keep the machinery operating well. The machines that go beep were in there too as I stood at the terminal and began to scroll. And all those memories and that fun and that life and that spark were closed to me and all the people standing behind me, listening to every word I said. Until I stopped speaking and the room began to empty and the shoulders of all around me slumped. The adrenaline high that pulls you in in the middle of the night to do your best and do good futile at that point.

Where they all went I'm not sure. Some went back to work, and saw the next elderly brain that would shortly wend its way to me to delve through, others I think went home. Others went to see the family that had been woken in the middle of the night and wanted to know and to hope but couldn't. Not after my words that night.

And I sat in my little dark room and became acquainted with every part of his body. Following every line and contour. And at some point in the night I realised my cheeks were wet, as I thought of all the things that were lost. And it was important to me to do things properly, as I looked deep inside him to the parts that no one had ever seen before. To take that privilege and that honour and not take any shortcuts. Even if as I was scrolling his breaths were slowing and those around him were hearing my words from kindly mouths that have had to say them too many times before.

I drove home when the moon was still in the sky but the birds were singing and the sun was glorious through the clouds. So tired that I felt that my limbs were leaden. Few thoughts racing around a usually noisy brain as I indicated for my turnoff and parked my car. The wind chilly as I stepped out, ruffling around my ears and tickling my cheek. And it struck me again, how lucky I am to have thoughts. To record them here. To keep on having thoughts.  And the tears started again, silent ones that kept coming and coming and coming. And I cried as I saluted the sun, stretched out on my yoga mat until my biceps shook with the pain.

And I cried as I drove to the water, and ran into the choppy sea while my hair laced with seaweed and salt. But as later I lay on the sand and it pressed into my cheek the tears finally stopped. And the sun tickled along my bare skin and began to warm me from the inside out.

I can't change what happened to him. It was all over before we'd even met. And I could become cool and hardened like some of those I work with. Who look at organs and wounds and that's all they see, because there are too many sad stories. And it's not because they're lesser people or doctors or somehow innately cold. It's because they will see that tomorrow and the day after and you have to find some way or else it will break you.

But I need to know their stories. Who they are and where they've come from. I need to feel like I've earned the right to the secrets locked up inside that no one else knows. And when I find the secrets, the memories that are lost forever, I see them just for a moment, before I report them gone. And maybe it's silly and maybe it's delusional and maybe I should just buy the bottle of wine like so many others. But as I drove home under the moon tonight, the heavy golden moon, I felt the sadness shift - I did right by him. I did right by others. I will continue to keep on doing my best.

And that's my secret.

Automne

The last time my fingers burned and my cheeks were bright and my hair bounced over a thick pashmina wrapped around my ears, I was in Paris and the stompy feet to keep them warm in the mornings and the shake of the shoulders before stepping under the shower and the cold tiles in the bathroom was a ritual that made me glad every day I was there. I thought of that tonight as I let my skin get cold, the frigid air brushing against my naked arms instead of covering up of how much I enjoy Autumn.

I bounced to work this morning in wonderful shoes and interesting tights, my favourite black dress and a trench coat I've learned to tie "just so". I felt sparkly, even though, for once, I was not wearing anything sparkly or even red. I was just bubbled up on the inside, happy and warm and red blooded.

I love leaving work as the sun is starting to set and the golden glow comes off the city as it reflects the mirrored buildings. Getting to my car when the sky is pink and streaky and the birds are chattering and noisy. I was excited to be alive every day that I was in France. There was so much potential just in the act of waking up in the mornings that lazing around in bed did not appeal. So much I could be doing or seeing or being. I miss being excited just by the call of the wind.

There's a life lesson in there, and an obvious one at that. One that gets swamped because of all the mundane and real life things that threaten to overtake in a mutinous coup at any time. But it was not the museums or the galleries or even the tower that I thought about most this morning as I shivered putting on my mascara. It was our little white apartment and walking through the streets. That first blast of fresh cold air as it burned my ears. Of holding Bingley's chilled hand until my furnace like ones warmed it up. Of bouncing while I walked.

I remember being on a boat in the middle of the Seine and closing my eyes under a bridge just so wishes could come true. Standing in line at Franprix with a bottle of 2E wine and a box of pasta and being so very much alive.

I stood under the shower tonight, unwilling to get out and be abused by the cold and thought about how much simpler life can be when you're on holiday and you only live for yourself. And some days those thoughts make me morose and want to chuck in this stupid career and the aeons of study and work and effort. Do something simple instead. Something that doesn't take but just provides. A normal job.

But I want as well, a life less ordinary. Where I can push myself to my mental limits and never say "I could have". I never want to be that person. I want to retire when I am still young at heart but with a roof over my head. I want to travel to Nepal and camp on the side of the mountain and trek until I'm dirty and dusty and hot and my feet have blisters. But I want to go to New York too, and drink fancy cocktails in an amazing dress with even more spectacular shoes. I want to go on a Cruise Ship that is taller than the highest mountain in Brisbane and goggle at the opulence of the lobby. I want to do things that I will never be able to do if I just do enough.

It's probably a curse to always want more. I can think of at least one good friend who may or may not read this who will probably shake their head. Think that killing myself for this job and being so strung out by study and stress and mindfuckery that I can't even hug them when I see them but struggle not to keel over instead is not worth it. That any benefit I can find, even if it's making a 20 year old boy feel less miserable for 15 minutes does not weigh up against the rest. And maybe that's true too.

But this is my truth and that mindfuckery took me to Paris where the wind was cold and slapped my face and my fingers burned and my ears hurt. And it will take me other places too, other places that allow me to dream and wonder and plan and anticipate. And it forces me to think. To be organised. To be unselfish sometimes. To be a better person. And that's probably the best bit of all. 

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

Charles Bukowski

Gauze

I hadn't washed our curtains since we moved into this house. I am sure that experienced Hausfraus are currently shocked out of speech, but it was well down on my priority list. They were the heavy, block out type of curtains, and so even though the faded minty green colour matched with the yellow of the walls to look precisely like bile stained vomit, I left them. Blockout blinds provide both insulation and the dark cave like sensation that promotes sleep. And that's all I wanted to do. 

But after my dawn experience the other day I felt compelled to take them down, clean away all the dust and to hang gauzy white curtains that billow in the breeze and make me wake to the soft glow of light in the mornings instead of the miserable peal from my mobile phone at whatever ridiculous hour it is that I need to get up. 

I have started my new job and I'm tired. Miserably tired. I am trying to fit too much in and it's so hard because part of me just does not want to. I want it to be easy. I don't want to race and panic and stress, but I have to and that's part of the deal. I come home so tired I want to crawl into bed, but I don't even get the luxury of that because I have to make dinner and read books and sign homework folders. 

I want to be gleaming and excited and happy. And I am quite often. But right now, even though I intended to write about the beauty of waking with the birds, my brain has collapsed into tears and I just can't. The girls are doing beautifully at school and the Possum is thriving at kindy and I want so much to write about those things, but right now I can barely move my fingers to type. So I'm going to crawl under the covers, now that I've kissed the last forehead and finished the last exciting Tashi adventure and feel guilty that I'm not studying. Because useless emotions creep up one you when you're tired, and never give you the giant reassuring hug that you need. 

Epoch

This time three years ago I was sitting in a large lecture theatre with my notes in a perspex folder as I listened. In front of me, nestled in my lap was the beginnings of my belly, that would continue to swell for the next few weeks as the Possum grew. I was no longer a student, and yet sitting there in the lecture theatre, I may as well have been, and life was not so very different to a few weeks earlier when I had been just a student.

My clothes were plain and boring. Partly because maternity wear was mostly plain and boring and partly because I couldn't afford much else. But it was also because part of me didn't care, and the part that did was too vain to accept that I couldn't wear the sorts of clothes I'd like to. I liked that I got a free pass in pregnancy anyway, as I listened to those lectures, surrounded by the excited hubbub of my fellow interns as we prepared to step out into the world for the first time and use that hard won "doctor" in front of our names.

We were naive and excited and optimistic. We had survived medical school and the world was ours for the taking. Bring on the ER scenes of jumping on someone's chest and watching them come back to life while we patted ourselves on our backs for a job well done. The fact that my first arrest that I arrived at was a shambles should have given me a heads up, but that naive idealism pervaded my first few months of medicine. And every time someone called me "doctor" a thrill went through me, as it registered that yes, I was.

I went on maternity leave, came back, and I chronicled the disaster that that was. I didn't come back with my adrenaline fuelled idealism and excited determination to make a difference. I came back desperate and isolated, dreading being at work and dreading being at home. It is no wonder that those first few months were so horrible that I have nearly blocked them from my conscience. But I survived them. Barely. And ended up in Palliative Care.

Palliative Care was to be the hardest and possibly the best rotation I did as an intern. I fought against it, it was the area of medicine I feared most, my personal experience being limited to ideas of giving up and saying goodbye. I learned it was not like that, and that the people who go into this area of medicine are the most dedicated and caring doctors I ever met. There is no money in palliation. Very little respect. So those that are there do it because they truly want to make a difference... and they do.

But by the end of 3 months of dealing with those that were sick and dying and afraid, I was a complete mess. Breaking point on so many fronts, falling apart while being the best doctor I could, leaving behind a family in tatters and so fragile that I felt as if I were made of glass. Transparent and brittle. But there was one saving grace, one tiny spark inside that illuminated through my limbs. I was a better doctor.

For the next 18 months I worked so hard that sometimes I'm not sure I slept. I learned to laugh again. I left home in darkness and often came home in darkness. I learned so much. I learned what it feels like to do chest compressions on someone when rigor has already started to set in. I learned what it's like to push a catheter into an epidural space and the unique joy that is seeing crystalline fluid drip from the end of the needle to show you're in the right spot. I also learned the fear in seeing that fluid flow bright yellow, thick as mustard.

I ordered x-rays, I attended crash calls, I took more blood than flows around my body. I prescribed medications I'd never even heard of, and looked up the formulations on MIMS guiltily, wondering how it is that people have so much faith in doctors. I became so slick with taking blood and putting in cannulas that other doctors would call me to come help. I made people laugh at 2am in the darkness as I punctured their feet and finally found a vein in the circle of light from the lamp so that they would mind less at the tourniquet and stop being so terrified.

I sat in the doctor's lounge and watched the sunrise more times than I can remember. A full lunar eclipse one night. Fireworks another. I fell asleep on the chairs, with my pager clutched in my hand, waking instantly as it vibrated and dashing off to put out more fires. I learned to do so many things that it didn't matter if I was mostly asleep, so long as I could do them effectively and not cause pain or fear.

I experienced death. I learned the smell that heralds multiorgan failure and felt the keening pain of it when it happened to someone I'd come to know. I found that there's comfort in sitting next to a bed in the twilight, when no one even really knows you're there and listening to the breath of someone whose inhalation may be their last. Tinkering with the syringe driver to make sure that everything was perfect. An event coordinator for the last moments on Earth. I learned there are good deaths and there are bad deaths, and tried to explain the difference to the desperate and afraid. I cried sometimes, but not very often. The worst days leaving me empty so that I didn't even know how to feel.

But I experienced life too. I saw patients with head injuries so bad that every morning I'd hold my breath a little, waiting to see if this was the day they'd deteriorate. I saw senseless injuries in people far too young to know what the inside of a hospital looks like and permanent disabilities while families smiled tight smiles and became excited by the opening of eyes. I saw two young people, both barely out of their teens, both have injuries that should have caused death. And they languished on the ward for weeks, barely changing, barely alive. Hearts and lungs that still work as 20 year old hearts and lungs should, but everything else at the mercy of a petulant brain.

And I watched one of those 20 year olds wave to me on the last day. Watched him start to show signs that his brain was waking up, and though he would never again be what he was, that he would be something more than what he had been, when I had washed and debrided the wound on his arm that he could not feel as it laid limply by his side. I saw one of them walk into the ward, a few weeks after she'd been discharged. Not ever again who she was, but smiling and walking alone. A girl who had lain silently in bed for weeks, only one side of her body responding to painful stimuli who had progressed just like the miracle pundits tell us.

But I saw many more who didn't.

I've done psychiatry and seen people trapped in their own minds. I've done pain and seen the same thing; those looking for a magic wand that doesn't exist - a silver bullet that will suddenly make them "normal". Seen some that engaged and accepted, went on and understood how to move past the pain and live the only life they have. Saw plenty more who couldn't. I did general surgery, abdominal surgery, orthopaedic surgery. Stood in theatre in the middle of the night while swooning a little from tiredness as I held a retractor. Gloved up and gowned, felt the sweat roll behind my visor and yawned again behind the mask.

I did months of neurosurgery and fought an inner battle with myself. One version of me somewhere is a surgeon, and operating on brains and spines, giving hope to the Harveys of the world. But as I watched the dedication and the enthusiasm of the registrars and consultants that I admired so much, I knew that I just couldn't. I wanted to so much, but the toll it was taking on the girls and Bingley was too much. I knew if I pursued it that I would lose my family. In short months I also lost nearly ten kilograms, and while I've maintained most of that, and I can't pretend that I don't like it, it played havoc with my health.

And now I find myself here on the very last day of being a resident doctor and I feel overwhelmingly sad. In the last few weeks I've felt relief that it's coming to an end, but the wards and their smell seem welcoming somehow. I know this rabbit warren of a hospital better than most. I know the secret passages and the stairs to everywhere. I've practiced on just about every ward there is in every building. I know the nurses and the fellow doctors. I know the ones who've been here forever and the ones that are only just making a name for themselves. I've made friends who will stick up for me, cover for me and tell me roundly when I'm being a twit. I've found referees that say glowing things that make my neck feel hot and my eyes prickle suspiciously.

And I sit here on my unpaid lunch break, in my tailored sleek dress with the shiny accessories and amazing shoes that I would have only dreamed of three years ago. My pager in front of me, my smart phone on my notes and I wonder at how hard it is to push forward. To accept change.

Part of me wants to just stay here, to keep doing this, at getting better and better at it, to not go down any more tunnels but to sit out here in the warm wind and the light. It has been an amazing three years. A terrible three years. I am so much older that I was three years ago. And if I stay here it's warm and it's comfortable and there's no risk at all.

But deep in my belly where the Gleam resides, there's a warm and flickering fire and that curl of anticipation that a little girl felt as she lay her forehead against the window as she sped to another destination, another new beginning. I don't exactly know where I'm going, I've just bought a ticket for the train and once I'm on it we'll speed away. And sometimes we'll travel through tunnels, and there will be no light anywhere at all. But even in the darkness we'll keep on moving forward, until I'm in the light and wind again.

Hello, I'm boring

Is this thing still on? Maybe?

So, I've not been writing much lately, as you may have noticed. Except about a holiday I took several months ago. And I still haven't finished that. Procrastination and I, we're like best friends forevah! Part of it is because I'm crazy busy and part of it's just because I'm too stubborn to write properly on here without finishing my holiday posts but at the same time too off with the fairies to sit down and commit to the last 2 posts. I'm completely manic at the moment and ahve the attention span of a mentally deficient squirrel, but am mostly fairly happy which in the scheme of things that probably counts for most.

I have been reading a lot lately, rediscovering my torrid affair with the written word and despairing at my dreadful attempts to replicate the same. In a glut I read about 15 books over the spate of a few days, and was left panting and sated but absolutely craving more so I bought a bunch off the Book Depository to encourage me to read my "have to read someday" list. I called it my reward for getting my training position and thought it quite grown up after my initial urge to buy ridiculous shoes, but now I'm remembering all the study I should be doing the beautiful books sit by my bed while I hunch over a Physics textbook and mutter mutinously.

None of the physics is sinking in and I feel like a giant fraud. I keep waiting to get found out and kicked off the program even before I have signed the contracts and it makes me anxious and rebellious at the same time. So I get little done and tinker aroudn the edges with my massive to do list and consider taking a nap. Apparently 30 is the new 13.

I then commit to projects like baking a Christmas Cake (which takes weeks if done properly) and making the annual Christmas dresses (which ought to have been done right now, but which I haven't started) and instead of usefully doing anything I avoid them and then panic about the same. These are clearly not useful or rational or particularly mature ways of coping with things but appear to be how I'm built.

I'm also in the crux of a massive emotional upheaval where I'm simultaneously delighted and bereft by a situation that leaves me swinging like a yo yo that is either maniacally happy with a slightly scary teeth baring grin or hopelessly wounded and teary. It's strange to sometimes sit in the middle of the electrons that buzz around the nucleus of Elemental Jenn and watch them zip around at crazy speeds and wonder why they don't just calm the fuck down. I'm sure Bohr could explain it.

The three raisons d'etre, are at their grandparents' place this week and tiring out someone else and I miss them dreadfully while being selfishly glad to not have to look after them at the same time. It is so ridiculously easy to look after only your self for a week that one could become quite accustomed to it. Savvy to this, they are being returned soon, and we will all be happier for it.

Anyway, I'm going to sneak off and read some Bronte (on whom I'm cheating with Hemingway and Melville), which I shouldn't be reading at all because I should be memorising a Physics text book while ignoring my to do list and the last 3 presents I have to wrap. WTF is with me not wanting to finish things? I think it's a disease.

Anyhoo, much love if you've made it this far. Bisous to all.

PS I never realised Jane Eyre started so miserably, I was hoping for a fact universally acknowledged... tell me it cracks a smile SOMEWHERE.

Louboutins in Luxembourg

Our last full day in Paris started with breakfast in the 6th, wandering ostensibly in the direction of the Jardin Luxembourg. I was sure we were going the wrong way, but Bingley was in charge of directions for the day and so I left it up to him as we wandered through side streets and colourful alleys. After the customary tartine and oeufs we headed down yet another side street while I looked bewildered at Bingley knowing for sure that we were headed in the wrong direction to get to the gardens. In fact I was arguing this point as he gestured to a fabulous window display as a way of distracting me. 

I stopped arguing and instead smiled brilliantly at the display of perfectly finished shoes on display, sitting serenely in the window, their indecent red soles flashing to the keen observer. "Which one would you choose?" asked Bingley as I licked the window, French style, salivating over the perfection of form. "All of them" was my flippant answer, preparing to wander past, not really in the mood for pining over something I couldn't have. 

"You should try them on" said Bingley, opening the door, and that is how I found myself, sitting on the velvet ottoman in Christian Louboutin, admiring dozens of pairs of spectacular shoes while a sales girl looked on bemusedly. No one came to my assistance at first, and I am sure that they assumed that we were yet more gawkers intent on "browsing" as I fingered a pair of shoes and tried not to look at the neat price tags. And to be fair, I wasn't sure we were doing much more than that either, and was waiting to be thrown out Pretty Woman style, however Bingley insisted, stating that he wanted me to have a pair, as my birthday present. 

I was finally approached by the sales assistant who asked if she could help, and in terrible French I told her I wasn't sure what I was after, but that my husband wanted to buy me a pair for my birthday. After that, she was all smiles and soon had a little pile of boxes in size 36.5 sitting beside me. I loved them all, and in an alternate universe where paying hundreds of Euros for a pair of shoes is not laughable (though if it keeps trending as it is, this may be a possibility...) I wanted them all. In the end though, I had narrowed it down into a pair of plain navy pumps that were comfortable and perfect and a pair of black Mary Janes with an impossibly slender heel that Bingley loved. In the end, in spite of the 200E difference, I left the decision with him and then proceeded to grin inanely as we wandered the streets of Paris with a Louboutin carry bag dangling off my arm.

To say I was excited was a shallow echo of the jubilant girl bouncing through the streets of Paris like a 4 year old on Christmas morning. The weather was greyer than it had been for the few days prior but I felt luminescent. We found the Jardin Luxembourg with its majestic paths and flower beds and the spectacular trees and I couldn't help it, even knowing that the white gravel would tear into the red soles I had to try them on again, to wander in Paris, in amongst beautiful Autumn leaves wearing something so elegant and perfectly fitting that it seemed to have been made for my foot alone. 

And as I gazed at the trees and the sky and beamed, I was approached and asked for directions, I was smiled at, and I smiled and smiled. I may not have been a 21 year old etudiant, living off baguettes and beure but an older Jenn, a wiser one with more elegance than the youthful starry eyed one was there instead, tripping along in her Louboutins. 

The rest of the day was spent wandering along Rue Rivoli, through the Marais and ending up again at Trocadero for the best hot chocolate I had in France before tired and happy coming home to our apartment. We went out for dinner that night, and sat on purple velvet chairs, and though I knew that it was tomorrow to be goodbye to a city I love as a soulmate, I knew that we would meet again. And in the meantime, when I am sad, I can unwrap my beautiful shoes, do up the tiny buckles around my tiny ankles and marvel at the wonder that is a perfectly crafted pair of shoes.