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Such an easy answer! My looks.
I have, for most of my life, hated my appearance. My mum was a late-bloomer, and so was I, and it didn't help that I skipped two grades and started highschool when I was 12 instead of 14 so that my body was still a child's when other girls were becoming young women. I was a stick insect then. Other things that didn't help were my extremely poor eyesight which required me to wear glasses with coke-bottle lenses [thank god for the ultra-thin polycarbonites of today!], the braces on my teeth, and the fact that my parents refused to allow me to wear blue jeans, which were basically the school uniform of the 1970s. Add to that a school full of mean-spirited kids, an emotionally-abusive mother, and a sensitive soul, and you have all the makings of a girl totally insecure about her appearance.
The summer before I went to grade 13, I got contact lenses, and got the braces off my teeth. My father's sister talked to my mother and asked her what the hell she thought she was doing, sending me to highschool in homemade clothes, and dragged her to the store and bought me blue jeans - two pair! After that wake-up call, my mother made sure I was dressed stylishly, and bought me makeup and had my hair done nicely. Now I looked good and I knew it. I was 16 and the only problem was that boys wanted to touch me and I just wasn't ready. So even then I hated my appearance. The only time I have been really happy with my appearance is between my first and second marriage. Randy as hell, slim, beautiful [yes, I can say it about myself], I moved to the big city, and every other weekend and every Tuesday night I had a home to myself. I knew I looked good and I wanted men to notice. In the space of a year and a half I only went home with two of them, and I married the second one.
Now I'm fat, and homely and I hate my looks again. Will the self-torment ever stop? I wonder. | |
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| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), 1884, 251 pages. Genre: adventure, American lit, classic, humour Basic Overview: Huckleberry Finn, friend of Tom Sawyer, leaves his Missouri home to escape his drunken, abusive father, and heads downriver on the Mississippi, having many adventures along the way. His companion on the journey is Jim, a runaway slave, whom Huck tries his best to protect.
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton, 1955, 200 pages. Genre: international, fiction Basic Overview: The novel tells of Pieter van Vlaanderen, lieutenant in the South African police force, beset by illegal temptation, and his struggles with his yearnings, his family, and his faith. The theme of apartheid in general and the treatment of one particular black woman in specific provide a background for this story. The Whispering Land by Gerald Durrell, 1961, 217 pages. Genre: animals, non-fiction, British, adventure Basic Overview: Naturalist and owner of his own zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey, Gerald Durrell, accompanied by his wife Jacquie, make an animal-collecting and filming trip to Argentina, where they encounter seals, penguins, guanacos, peccaries, and rather magnificently do not manage to encounter any vampire bats, despite the author’s baiting the trap with his own big toe. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, 1998, 346 pages. Genre: short stories, poetry, fantasy, British Basic Overview: Gaiman’s subjects are varied – his stories are about H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional New England town, about Lucifer in Los Angeles, wholesale contract killers, Penthouse magazine, teenage fans of Michael Moorcock and their fantasy lives, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the Holy Grail, to name a few subjects in Gaiman’s anthology. | |
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Unfortunately, in the land of the bipolar - some of you know it as manic-depressive - the one thing I absolutely must do before I go to bed at night is take my pills. I have discovered, and it's been a horrible discovery to make, that missing even one night of my pills means that my moods are way out of whack for several days. I find this upsetting on so many levels. I think the thing that I find the most distressing is the knowledge that I am sufficiently mentally ill that I can never miss a dose. I don't want to be this sick. Rationally, I understand that it's a physical illness, and that it's the same as a heart patient always taking their heart medicine, or a diabetic always taking their insulin, but because it's a mental illness, I always feel like I am just one dose of pills away from madness. There are so many "what ifs" that could result in me missing some doses of pills that I always carry extras, as I never want to end up as a crazed madwoman, talking to the birds in my home in the park. The other thing that bothers me is that I can never just fall asleep at night. I used to fall asleep in front of the TV a lot. John and I would go downstairs and watch TV and I'd get drowsy; he'd tuck me in and I'd spend the night there. That never happens anymore, can never happen again. It's a simple thing, but I miss it. My pills are powerful enough to sedate an elephant, so the option of taking them and then going downstairs and watching a movie isn't available.....so that lovely soporific falling asleep watching TV is gone forever, and it's something I used to love, something I found so comfortable. Now if I feel drowsy watching TV, it's bedtime, game over. As I've said before, and will say again, mental illness sucks. | |
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| Thank you so much to all of you who sent well-wishes to this flu sufferer. It meant a lot. I'm still suffering, but I did get into work today for a six-hour shift, 3 p.m. - 9 p.m. It was terrible! Not only did I feel like crap, but fate had worked hard to send me the worst customers in the universe, and I dealt with some real doozies tonight! And, of course, there was my own stupidity to deal with....
I was sitting at my desk, just sitting, as I was going through one of those "I'm too hot" stages of the flu, and I was sweating and feeling awful, and was just trying to get through it. Wondering how much time was left before I went home, I looked at the time, which is displayed digitally on the phone handset, I was horrified to see that it was only 5:06. Only six minutes had passed since the optician went home?! My god, time must be passing so slowly because I felt so sick. I sat at my desk, taking some ibuprofen, and then getting up and going back to the fridge for some cold water, and looked again at the clock - still 5:06. I am embarrassed to tell you how long it took before I realized that I was looking at the date, not the time. However, it was only 5:33, so time wasn't passing incredibly quickly, anyway!! | |
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| I have the flu. Stomach-ache, ache in every single joint in my body. Thank goodness for books and laptops one can drag into bed, and for soft things to cuddle up to like dogs, teddy bears, pillows, and for soft beds to sleep in. In fact, I think it's time for another nap. Good night! | |
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| Apparently, if one's husband plays the harmonica to certain German Shepherds, they sing along by howling, and sometimes by jumping up and trying to remove the harmonica from said husband's mouth. It's a hilarious sight, and both Aislinn and I have been struck down by fits of the giggles! | |
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I had to think about this one, but when the answer came to me, I knew instinctively that it was the right one. It's to Lyman Ward, the [male] narrator of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, which is one of my favourite books, and which won the 1972 Pulitzer. Lyman's elderly and disabled. He has degenerative arthritis which has caused his joints to lock, and he's stuck in a wheelchair. However, he has his house rigged up so he can get around it easily, and he has excellent caregivers, so that he can live independently. Why do I relate to Lyman Ward? I'm bipolar, which is a disability of sorts. The severity of it kept me from working for several years until I could be stabilized on medication. Lyman's wife Ellen left him, unable to tolerate his anger at the disease, I have often feared [and will probably continue to fear] that eventually my spouse's incredible patience and kindness will dry up and that he'll be gone with the wind. Lyman's son, Rodman, is trying to put his father in a home, not so much for Lyman's sake but so that he, Rodman, will have peace of mind about his father's safety and health. Lyman steadily resists, and goes to great lengths to prove that he can live independently. One of my great fears is that someone in my family will put me in a home and that I will be institutionalized on a long-term basis, and frankly, I'd rather die than face that. It didn't occur to me until I thought about this writer's block question that I identify with Lyman Ward so strongly, but apparently, I do! | |
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| The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins, 1878, 251 pages. Genre: classic, british, suspense Basic Overview: English Lord Mountbarry throws over his charming fiancee for the scheming Countess Narona, and after their marriage, calamity ensues. Murder, mysterious disappearances, ghosts, strange revulsions, and the city of Venice feature in this suspense story. Personal Opinion: The Haunted Hotel was so much unlike the dense, detailed, carefully plotted stories by Wilkie Collins that I have come to know and love so much. It was simplistic, uninteresting, with no character development, an ending you could have guessed a mile off, and with nothing but determination to steer me towards finishing the book. I was really surprised at how the mighty Collins had fallen. A quick trip to Wikipedia gave me some biographical details that explained the whole thing. Apparently Collins, suffering from rheumatic gout, became addicted to opium in the form of laudanum, and after the death of his closest friend, Charles Dickens, in 1870, Collins became increasingly addicted to the point of suffering paranoid delusions, and believing that he had a doppelganger with him at all times, whom he called "Ghost Wilkie". Wikipedia says that "his novels and novellas of the 1870s and 1880s....are generally regarded as inferior to his previous productions and receive comparatively little critical attention today". I was really disappointed in this book. Expecting my usual fun Wilkie Collins read, I instead read 251 pages of drivel. Not a good choice, and a waste of my time. | |
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| Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Richard and Nicholas Crane, 1987, 236 pages. Genre: travel writing, non-fiction, british, adventure Basic Overview: I received this book through the kindness of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cat63 , who sent it to me, overseas, when I evinced an interest in it. Subsequent research has proven to me that it is unavailable for purchase in Canada, so I am doubly grateful for the gift. Thank you! Journey to the Centre of the Earth is written by two mad Englishmen, cousins, who decide to go off for a few weeks' bicycling to the geographical centre of the earth, which is defined as the place most remote from the open sea in any direction. To get to this isolated spot, which lies in northern China near its borders with Russia [then the USSR] and Mongolia, means that the pair must pedal their bikes through monsoons in Bangladesh, extreme heat in India, altitudes of up to 17,000 feet in Nepal and Tibet, and ride through parts of the Gobi and the Taklamakan deserts in China. Interesting new words learned: col, burdock, barchan, loess | |
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| I genuinely sold glasses, two pair, to a Mr. Richard Head. His family calls him one of the more common abbreviations of Richard, Dick.
Dick Head.
Dickhead.
Seriously. | |
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