Start out as you mean to go on

Happy New Year!

Normally at this time I reflect upon the year and what I learnt as it progressed. Instead of writing a long detailed soppy post about all I experienced this year and the knowledge gained, I'll just sum it up in a list. Major events of 2009 included the following: a break-up, finding a lump in my breast that ended up being nothing but gave me a week of grief, having a long standing debt repaid and a friendship restored, painfully discovering what I thought to be a true and lasting friendship to be a sadly superficial one, passing the Life in the UK test and being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, Dave and May's fabulous wedding, teaching a new year-level and receiving top marks and accolades in a rather challenging course. Not all of these received blog posts, but they're worth mentioning when summing up the year as a whole.

Now a new decade has arrived and as such I believe it deserves 10 resolutions. I started to tweet them as I came up with them, but decided to just lay them out in one neat blog post rather than just tweet away. So here they are in no particular order.

1) I will take better care of my plants.
I've been a horrid plant caretaker this year and have killed two plants due to my negligence. I've been a better caretaker of plants in my past, so I will do my best to rectify that and return to my good nursing ways.

2) I will buy a new electric kettle to replace my broken one and make coffee at home instead of buying pricey lattes.
Kettle has been purchased. It's actually kind of sexy. Is it wrong for me to think of a kettle as sexy?

3) I will make more and buy less.
I mean this and have started to do so with Christmas gifts this year.

4) I will keep a tidier flat.
No explanation needed here.

5) I will set aside at least 30 minutes five times a week to write for my own purpose.
It does not necessarily follow that I'll be blogging more, but I do intend to take my writing a bit more seriously than I have done in the past.

6) I will cook more and eat out and get takeaways less.
When doing this I will endeavour to be healthy in my meal choices.

7) I will work out at least 3 times a week for one hour.
It may be going to the gym. It may be running. It may be cycling. Whatever it is, it will happen for at least an hour 3 times a week.

8) I will put less effort into obvious superficial friendships and put more effort into the real and lasting ones.
Putting it mildly it's no fun when you realise that you're in a friendship that's a one way street and you've been kind, patient and giving only to receive little back. Or, possibly you are belittled and patronised by someone you once held dear. Both of these things happened to me this year and sadly more than once. Yet, I was forgiving and opened myself up to have it happen again and again. I am fortunate to have some wonderful people as friends and I shall keep them close and treasure them. Certain others I'll just leave be and respond politely to when contacted. No use ramming my head against a wall any more, even if I was wearing a helmet.

9) I will not repeat old mistakes.
I know what I'm talking about here. That's all that matters.

10) I will set my finances in order so I can buy a place.
I hate thinking about this stuff, but I need to and I need to do it now.

So, there we go. Ten (not so) little ways which I will change. And with this blog post, I hope that I'm starting out as I mean to go on.

Now I've got some cooking and tiding up to do.

Why Blog?

A few days ago I had an interesting conversation about my blog.

Yes, you read that right. I used 'interesting' and 'my blog' in the same sentence.

This discussion about my blog began innocently over the personal postings of my blog. A friend of mine and I have spoken about my blog from time to time. He doesn't get it. He'll read it when I write a little review or something to that effect that interests him and tweet about it, but other than that he doesn't see the point. We speak on a semi-daily basis and he knows all about my life, so why read about it? Also, he is vehement disagreement of my postings about my love life and when it has gone wrong. He has reason to be in vehement disagreement. Many, many, many years ago, long before I was blogging on Blogger even, he and I were an item and it went horribly wrong. He wasn't aware of my blog and in my rage I told the world what he did and directed them in an indirect manner to his MySpace profile by giving several obvious hints. Eventually he found it, read it, and deleted me from his friends on MySpace. We had words. I changed my post and he re-added me as a friend. Ironically, this whole incident opened us up to becoming friends somehow. And, we have remained friends since.

Since then I have been honest with anyone I may date about my blog. Not that they all dash out and read it. Believe me it says a lot about how someone really feels about you if they are dating you, know you have a blog and DON'T bother to read it. I tend to get a bit reckless with my blogging in those relationships, as if I'm daring them to have a peek. However, I still don't expose confidences. I also do not name them (Well okay, when I'm REALLY angry I have, but have since removed those names). I do, however, expose my feelings and insecurities about said relationships.

So we were having the usual disagreement about my blog and he brought up some interesting points. First, he pointed out that my posting about someone else and what they've done is the same as someone taking naked pictures of me and then putting them up but with the face blacked out. I did not agree. I said my angry posts about injustices were similar to someone taking pictures of me doing something wrong to someone else and then posting pictures of it for all to see but with my face blocked out. And, if I were caught doing something like that then yes, posting pictures with my face blocked out was justified

He pointed out that instead of blogging about it I should TALK to the person. I responded that with the exception of him I have always done both. In his opinion that's just weird. Who cares? Who reads that stuff? I said it was surprising the amount of people with voyeuristic tendencies. (However, in my head I was thinking about the average amount of visits Sitemeter tells me I get a day- five. Yes, five people a day read my blog and those who are not part of 'My Stalkers' to the right find it by accident while they're searching for something else. I love Sitemeter, but I digress)

Then he pointed out that people can and do change (he did) and just because someone did me wrong when that blog post goes up, it's up there forever. What if an ex’s new girlfriend came across it and judged him based on what was there. My response to that was 1. my name isn't even on this blog or any site linking to it, so aside from my picture how would the ex's girlfriend know it was me 2. no one who has done me wrong has their name on my site (anymore). Thus it would be a bit difficult for people who didn't know me personally to make the connection and 3. if my ex's girlfriend is researching my blog to find out about him, then my ex should be more concerned about the tenuous state of their relationship or the fact that he's possibly dating an obsessive bunny boiler rather than the fact that there's something not very flattering about him up here.

Finally, my friend said something powerful that stuck with me and has bothered me since. He said that in his view my putting up private details of a relationship was unethical. He went on to add that when I posted what I posted about him it felt like an invasion of privacy and a breach of trust. He also said that in the past few years he has sometimes worried about spending time with me in case he did something to piss me off and I posted a blog about it. That hurt... a lot. I didn’t have anything to say in response but to apologise over and over for something I did years ago and got a bit teary. He told me to stop being melodramatic and it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be.

Maybe I've just breached his trust again by posting this but he made some very valid points about my blog and that last one followed me around like a pack of yippy dogs snapping at my ass.

I took my bitten-up butt over to some friends’ house a few days later and told them about this conversation. My friends just laughed. “I can see his point about invasion of privacy,” one of them said, “but he’s one to talk about a breach of trust after what he did to you years ago. If you have remained his friend and trusted him for this long after all of your history, then he can trust you…and does. He was just making a point and you were being melodramatic.”

“Frankly," another added, "maybe we should all be worried about being called out for treating others badly. If we all lived in fear that unkind acts towards others would be posted for all to see, maybe we’d all treat each other better.”

Somehow I don’t see my blog as some type of societal moral policeman. And, I’ve not been too nice to people myself at times. Maybe somewhere there is an anti-H~ blog.

I had a hard serious think about the reasons why I blog and came up with the following reasons:

1. I blog when I have a thought that might possibly perhaps maybe be somewhat kind of a bit profound.

2. I blog when something strikes me as funny and I want to share it.

3. I blog when I've done or seen or read something interesting (or horribly dull) and I want to review it.

4. I blog to keep peeps back in the good ol' U.S. of A. updated on what I've been up to, although I've not been too good at that lately. They can find more about what I've been doing on Facebook or Twitter than on here.

5. Finally as previously discussed, I blog as an emotional outlet in lieu of therapy. It's psychologically purging to tell the world my thoughts and fears and get anonymous support (and sometimes free advice) either through comments or emails. And let's face it, when I'm angry I want to let the whole world know. I scream it from my rooftop and then after having a friend pick me up from the police station for a noise violation, I come home and quietly blog about it. Sometimes I'm quite open and a lot of times I exaggerate. I'm talking about being angry at things in general--from current events to love life kafuffles.

But maybe I should be a bit more editorial about what I put on here about my personal life. After all isn't it kinda like throwing stones in a glass house?

Stop by in a few months and see if I've had a change of opinion about being too personal.

Oh and if you're going to go back to my old blog to try to figure out who my friend is, maybe you should think about the quality of your own life. Why is who that friend is even important? In the greater scheme of things why was writing about all of this even important?

I think I've just entered some type of blogger's existential crisis.

I Was On The Lamb This Weekend

This was my first weekend as being 100% single since the beginning of October. Unlike certain other new singles (ahem) I didn't go out on the pull. Nope I spent it with fabulous friends.

On Friday night I had a few drinks with Beka and Kellie. Kellie had been in Oz for the last 6 weeks or so and thus we had some catching up to do. I had to recant the whole tale of woe. It was painful to say the least, but then I got her to talk about Oz. She had a brilliant time and I loved hearing about her trip.

On Saturday my friend, Russ, came over. I think he has some sort of H~ Heartache radar. I've dated a few different men since I've moved here, but only have had 3 serious bruises to my romantic aortic pump, J- being number 3. Each time Russ has been there within a week to take my mind off my heartache with fun and frolics. He appears without my summoning. I'm lucky to have such a friend like him. In addition to Russ I have to say that all my friends here have been wonderful and patient during this time of 'me me meness' that I've been putting them through with all the crap that's been going down. I'm really blessed. Most of them were out that weekend as well. And so we had some fun and did some frolicking.

The Lamb, a favourite local of mine, (I had my last birthday party there) celebrated the 2nd year that Adam and Liz had taken over management. Since the 2nd anniversary is cotton, they had a Cotton Eyed Joe Theme. Thus people were dressed up as Cowboys or 'Indians.' I have this orange shiny cowboy hat, which Seattle Julia got for me in New Orleans right before I moved to Mexico. I wore that and then keeping with the theme of my Disco Cowboy Hat, I wore a rather sexy seventies dress. And here I am.


Russ told me to use what I had and so I did.

And so off to the Lamb. As I said many of my mates were there. Here is a pic of a few of them. As you can see they are all related. ;-)


The best bit though was the bucking Lamb. Yes, not a bucking bull but a bucking Lamb. I was able to ride it for 16 seconds... on my 3rd attempt. Kellie was also there and she got a brilliant shot of me riding it.

Not bad for a camera phone with no real flash, eh?

On Sunday I went with Kellie and London Julia to Twickenham where we watched England stomp on France in the rugby. 34-10. We met up with some other people and had a lovely time.

So, not bad for my first weekend as a renewed single woman. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the simplicity and levity of it all.

Helpless Feeling

I was at a girly sleepover last night at Em's when I got a text from McP telling me that Shaun's mum had passed away from cancer. I quickly sent Shaun a text with my condolences, but what I really wanted to do was climb through my phone and come out on his end and give him a hug. But, I can't.

Today, I found out that my friend, Steve, also lost his father to cancer. Both these deaths have been coming for a while, but I know from experience that just because you know a death of a love one is inevitable doesn't make it any easier. I'm sending Steve a text now, but again I just want to crawl though my phone....

Rae expressed how I feel pretty well here. Unfortunately, I can't even offer my sofa or give a real hug.

When my friends overseas are hurting, I hate that I made the choice to move here.

Additional Lessons Learnt in 2007

Two final lessons...

If you are travelling on a long international flight (10 hours or so) and have your shoes off for comfort, make certain you put them back on before going to use the loo or else you will have urine smelling socks. I actually learned this over the summer, and I was halfway to the toilet on my flight to the US when I remembered. I had no problem remembering this on my flight back.

So, yes I'm back in the UK now. Tucson was great with my family although my brother couldn't be with us, and Seattle was....uh....interesting. It was good to see those I was able to see, but as usual I wasn't able to see everyone. I had a great time, don't get me wrong. However, things are no longer the same with many of my friends and will never really be again. There's a lot of hurt and anger presently. I had many heavy conversations with many people and heard many opinions about why this is the case. Despite it all there does remain a love and camaraderie among those I was able to see. And, so my final lesson in 2007...

You can never really go home again, but true friendship really will always survive any adversity.

And so I'm off to Linds's to have a quiet night in since I'm getting over my jet-lag, but at least my socks don't smell like urine.

Trust Your Gut

A while back I met someone through a friend, who I didn't entirely trust. It was just that uneasy feeling you get when you feel like something is a bit off. Over time, however, I got to know this person and came around and really admired them and enjoyed their company. That uneasy feeling gradually melted away.

Very recently I found out something, and this morning I realised that it proved my original gut feeling right. This would explain why upon hearing about what this person had done I was shocked, but wasn't all that surprised.

So, my dear reader, when you meet someone who for some inexplicable reason you just don't trust, heed that gut feeling and be cautious.

Lesson learnt.

The hardest thing for me...

about living abroad is when stuff happens to any of my loved ones back in the US, I'm over here feeling helpless. It's not as if my being back in the US can change anything or that it would even make a difference when bad things happen to those I love or they get sick, etc. But I know I would feel better-more useful or a better friend somehow-if I were there when things go bad. It's a catch 22 really, because if I were to move back, which I have no intention on doing, then any time someone I know and love over here had bad shit happen I would feel just as awful and helpless.

Sigh...

I'm the one who chose to leave and this is just one of the consequences of that choice.

Oh and things are generally fine. I don't mean to sound like someone I love is dying because they aren't.

That Lazy OCD rears it's head

Guess I'm not too surprised by this.

Which Friends Character Are You?
	You are Monica. You have a go-all-out nature. Your friends better watch out, because you play to win. Also, when it comes to order and cleanliness, you're a bit obsessive compulsive. Your best trait, however, is your thoughtfulness. You go to great lengths to care for your friends.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

So, where the hell is my Chandler?