Ruby Slippers

This afternoon, I went into work to exercise one of the perks of my job - free printing (within reason) and binding services. Okay, so it's not up there with the great perks of all time, like bosses who invite you to their summer houses on faraway islands or a company Porsche, but it was really all I asked for from today.

In case you were wondering, the other perk is hot young boys asking for my help.

My dissertation is complete (!) I've already noticed two tiny little flaws since I bound it - but it is too late. I'm going to let them go. And I know it's taken me way too long to write, so maybe I don't have the right to feel this way, but I'm a little proud. I keep picking it up and looking at the contents page. I wrote chapters. Me! With titles! And my abstract rocks! My conclusion is drivel but we'll just ignore that one for now while I bask - oh, let me bask!

Also, why is everyone bailing on Blogger? Why am I suddenly wondering what's so special about Wordpress, and if I am missing out? Why do everyone's Wordpress templates look so fetching? And lastly, why do I feel strangely loyal to Blogger? Blogger is like home, comfy and a little worn around the edges, and Wordpress seems like some exotic island you travel to by boat and then sit drinking pink cocktails with umbrellas in, perhaps wearing sequins. Do I want to get on that boat? After that description I'm thinking hells yeah but meh, I don't know. Blogger makes me feel so safe. Would Wordpress merely use me for some mind-blowing sex and then cast me off, disappearing almost totally from my life, except for the occasional and incredibly awkward work-based accidental meeting? Oh wait, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

(FYI I didn't sleep with him, it's just always mind-blowing in my head.)

Take a Moment

Yesterday, I finished all the studying I had planned for the day early (proofreading would have been totally redundant because I lost the ability to read actively, and I'm waiting for feedback before I tinker with things) and so I had the night off. I treated myself to Marie Claire and sat in the garden drinking shandy and flipping through the fashion pages! I managed not to let the fact that La Dunst looks effing miserable on this cover spoil my R&R. I've only half-read her interview but am so far moved to say: side of jaded with that, Kiki?

Then I watched Road to Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law in a sinister and completely unfanciable incarnation. Paul Newman has never really been on my radar before, though I know the man is a legend, but oh my God can he act! You're all reading this thinking "Well, duh...", Oscar nominations galore etc. but I haven't really seen him in anything before and his performance completely blew me away. I really enjoyed the film.

Whilst flipping through Marie Claire I also happened to fall in love.

I'm not even usually a Louis Vuitton girl but I adore this bag and wallet. Shame I haven't got a spare £700 lying around...

Oral Fixation

The latest from Liverpool (thanks for noting my absence, Nic!) is simply this: I have been buried alive under the weight of draft copies of my dissertation chapters and the tomes of literary theorists, so sorry if I have been a little quiet on the posting and commenting front. I am still checking in with you guys - you provide me with much needed study breaks!

I have to hand my dissertation in on Tuesday, before I head to my job. It's on Representations of Food and the Female Body in Contemporary Texts, and is the final piece of work in my quest to become a Master of the Arts, all 21,000 words of it! I have plenty of work to do still, but at our last meeting my tutor was talking a lot about graduation - surely that's a good sign? It seems to suggest that I might actually be there. Unfortunately, as I near the end of what I have affectionately nicknamed The Dissertation That Will Not Die for the past two and a half years, I seem to be losing my marbles more and more. After battling not to mention Shilpa Shetty's appearance on Celebrity Big Brother (I swear it's relevant), and allowing myself but a paragraph on the Size Zero phenomenon, I am now seriously considering using Shakira's album art on the cover of my essay.

Before you guffaw, please cut me some slack, it's after 1 AM as I type and I've been working on the thing all day. Factor in that I never actually dreamed I would get to this stage and you can appreciate my dilemma. I don't even have chapter titles yet. Other interesting images are dotted about this post. I'm debating whether to go with something more traditional like Biblical Eve (versus Shakira Eve, probably the most appropriate choice, but yawn) or something a bit more fun like the other images.

Or I could really freak the bejesus out of my tutor and use this.

But I'm not sure I've got the balls for it. Ho hum. Now have sudden urge to eat a Magnum. Worrying.

Take the Box

Attention: this post contains excessive swearing and maudlin but slightly frantic observations which some readers may find offensive.

As we all know by now I am an obsessive freak, and yes, the Friday 13th encounter with Shit Brick... I mean Alfie, has been playing over in my head at regular intervals throughout the weekend (although I do have to admit, I got quite heavily embroiled in correcting the footnotes for my dissertation and his existence seemed a little less important than going through each fucking footnote checking comma placement between about 1 am and 4 am this morning.)

But the possibility that I may miss the deadline for my dissertation submission has not stopped me from thinking about the things I should have said or done differently when we bumped into each other. I'm not really sure why, as the harder I try with this stuff the more I seem to lose. Still, I find myself questioning the way I handled the situation. Surely, there were better things I could have said or done. So far, I've come up with the following:

a) "You have custody of Victoria Street, this corner's mine, it has all the shoe shops, damn it!"

b) "What the fuck are you wearing?" (Admittedly, not big or clever but HELLO this was the one thing that was begging to be uttered, or perhaps bellowed from the other side of the street)

c) "Who's your friend? He's hot!" (Not big or clever but, I'm assured, effective)

d) Said nothing, just turned to my sister, then both started laughing and pointing (I'm really not very big or very clever...)

e) Ran over to him, slapped him on the head and shouted "FOD-NEY!" (Casual violence coupled with devastating insult = satisfying in the extreme)

Or finally f) All of the above.

Any other suggestions? I take requests.

Apart from that, I have had Amy Winehouse's Take the Box on repeat, and her voice at the end of the song is so beautiful and drenched in sincerity; it makes me want to cry.

May I also just admit that when I got home on Friday I dug out my old phone and switched it on just in case (it's my old number and it has all kinds of messages off him saved on it. He has my new number but I figure he probably just deleted it.) I confessed this to my sister earlier and she laughed at me and asked me if I'd also checked my emails, I was like, "Of course, I check my work email from home every day!"

Just in case.

I spend so much time fantasising about running into him and then when I actually do I can't handle it and can't get away from the man quickly enough.

I'm not normal. I don't care that he looked crap. I don't care that he's a twat. I just want the fucker to want me. And he doesn't.

It kind of sucks.

Huh?

So I just had a meeting with my tutor and he told me my work is first class and almost of publishable quality! Okay, so I know there is an 'almost' in there, but I'm pretty psyched none the less, especially since I've totally been dragging my ass over it. Maybe this is what I should be doing?

Lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it.

Alloway Grove

It's a beautiful day outside and I had plans to meet up with Dedalus that I've had to cancel. We were going to do lunch at Tabac. I'm full of cold, again, and feel like my head is in a vice (yet I'm still blasting music from my laptop speakers.) I blame my erratic sleeping schedule since Bertie came to live with us. He's really very good, but he's just exhausting! At the moment, I'm allowing him to eat a pair of Boyf's pyjama bottoms because it's keeping him quiet.

Yesterday, my swanky new phone arrived. It's a Samsung D900 and I've just about got to grips with it. It's not even pink ya'll - I went for performance over girlieness! I guess I really am growing up. I purged my contacts list and it's quite shocking how many people I've fallen out of touch with. I have to say there are only about twelve people on there that I actually bother texting. And that's including Alfie who I never text anymore for obvious reasons but to whom I forwarded my new number in a big group message that began with a casual "Hi all." (I think I can record video on it and put it on here, but that's a bit advanced for someone who just figured out how to store her sent messages.) But looking at my meagre contacts makes me wonder just how I'm going to use up all this credit I've paid for. In the old days, I used to blow about fifty quid on my phone over the weekend.

Yes, I'm still mourning the old days for the foreseeable future. Girl can't help it. But at least I'm not carrying those 200 messages from him around with me anymore, you'll be glad to know MJ! They're safely stored on my old phone and will be put away to gather dust.

Anyhoo, the studying is not going very well. I need to write something a bit more meaty on alternative readings of Dorcas in Toni Morrison's Jazz, and then I need to bell hooks a bit of my chapter on the burden of representation. My chapter on The Edible Woman and Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" is looking a bit like a wasteland. Did I mention my deadline is May first? Meh, at least I have an idea of what actually needs to be done. That's progress for me, right?

Ball Ache

I don't know if I have talked about this much, what with my inability to stop myself from sounding like a scratched record, but I am attempting to turn over a new academic leaf, and have been trying to sort my shizz out vis-a-vis The Dissertation That Will Not Die. I met my tutor last Thursday, braving gale force winds, roads closing, roof tiles and tree trunks flying through the air to do so (not exaggerating), and spent last weekend writing an outline of my chapters for him. I was a bit miffed by the fact that he turned up 25 minutes late for our meeting, and that if I hadn't stopped into the humanities office, and the receptionist didn't just happen to spot him down the corridor, the meeting wouldn't have happened at all. And then there was the fact he was totally unprepared - even more so than me - and asked me what was the meeting about, again? But I am even more annoyed with him today, since I battled through rush hour traffic to meet him at five o'clock, a time convenient for him, and he never bothered to bloody show up! Does the dude not realise I have to get two buses there, two buses back, and it takes me more than two hours? Grrr.

I was so proud of myself for actually getting the work done at the weekend aswell. I shut myself in the spare room, shunned all of Boyf's attempts to distract me, sacrificed my social life, and this is how I am rewarded! I left him a note explaining that I'd turned up for the meeting on time and hung around waiting for him again, and asked him to give me some feedback via email or telephone so that I could make some progress before our next, unscheduled, meeting. I'm really peeved; I need encouragement so much to get this God-forsaken project out of my life. If I do go back to university, it certainly won't be to this one, as it's been nothing but one obstacle after another!

Don't even get me started on Registry...

Junk of the Heart

This is supposed to be the week I get my life in order. But I have just got myself ready to go into uni (I'm meant to drop in on my new tutor before four - it takes me an hour to get there and it's 15:02 according to my laptop) and now I'm sitting here blogging instead. I have a headache.

I also have great plans to redecorate my bedroom and throw out/box up a load of junk. But I'm back at work tomorrow and I haven't done much more than throw out some old receipts I was holding onto.

There is a bag of clothes at the foot of my bed waiting to be returned to Miss Selfridge, and I still haven't picked up those heels. I'm completely unprepared for Saturday, the Big Night out with 'Muffin and Crunchie/Himself.

My little baby Puppy isn't doing very well at the moment. He's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and suffers from a genetic disorder that effects his heart valves. He's lethargic and acting weird and on about six different pills. He's ten so he's quite old for that breed.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my sister's husband's death and I think she might go off the rails. It' going to be a tough day for my niece.

MJ is away and I have the house to myself. I was looking forward to having some alone time with the Boyf but now I kind of wish MJ was here, if only to distract me a bit with his terrible singing in the shower, leaving wet towels everywhere, experimental cooking, and those really awful detective programmes he makes me watch because he hates watching TV alone.

Maybe I subconsciously don't want to sort my life out, because then I will have to make some decisions and I haven't got the foggiest? Maybe some people are just supposed to flounder around aimlessly in the messy debris of moments gone by? Maybe it's no bad thing? We can't all be like 'Muffin with his five year plans, work diaries, strictly adhered to priorities. The man is like a machine. A machine in tweeds and a corporate logo tie! He really knows what he wants and goes for it though. I wish I had such direction!

I'm gonna e-mail my tutor and cancel. Then I'm going to look at my dissertation - I'll probably blog again when I get bored after about five minutes of that. Then I shall go upstairs and start organising things until half past five when Puppy's next truckload of pills have to be administered. Unless the Boyf shows up in the next tens minutes and saves the day - he can get me to uni in twenty minutes.

You know why I was running late in the first place? Straightening my hair. What was that about priorities?

The Swine!

Oh My God. My tutor is actually abandoning me and has quit his job. I'm being palmed off on somebody else with as little ceremony as an email suggesting I get in touch with his replacement.

Given up hope, do you think? The bugger advised me all wrong (he does not specialise in the field I'm examining, and therefore has tried to lead me toward other subjects, namely sexuality, despite the fact I'm interested in postcolonialism), and now he's going to let some other dude clear up the mess!

The nerve of it!

I'm planning on asking if there's any way I can go part time at work this week, but I had an opportunity to do just that today and bottled out because, in case you've forgotten, my boss hates my guts. I so need to but I really think that they'll say no. But I can't keep hanging around, waiting for a part time job to open up and fooling myself that I'll "make time" for my dissertation in the meantime. Because there's just too many things going on in my life for this to happen. And then there's the thing about having zero motivation to make this phantom time appear.

Maybe my new supervisor - a guy I've never met or even heard of, will help?

Yeah, I won't hold my breath on that one.

Stand and Deliver

Even though I have just sent a text to Guillermo bemoaning the compulsory oohing and ahhing girls are compelled to do in the proximity of friends/colleagues' babies (be they admittedly adorable like Lady P's or a screaming harpy), I just have to take time out for a baby blog. I went to see my new baby great-nephew on Sunday and he's sooooo tiny. I held him and there was no weight to him at all. He has blue eyes like my niece's and thick dark hair. My niece sounded amazingly grown up. I went to the hospital with my sister and my nieces, who are all gorgeous and brown after their recent holiday. My sister is so confident driving now (we passed our tests in the same month.) I need to get back in the saddle!

So I'm in the process of applying for a couple of jobs. One of them is part time so if I got it I'd ask to cut my hours down here and do them both. I really like the idea of that because it would shake things up a little and make life more interesting. I also applied for a job I'm not qualified for, but I thought what the hey, you never know your luck. I really, really, really hope I get one of them. Even though I'm only new here and everything and things are about to pick up and get crazy, the idea of working here for a long period of time with nothing new on the horizon depresses me. It's weird because I've always worked towards something, some goal like exams or deadlines or new semesters. I don't like the idea of not having that.

In other news, my dissertation I've been worrying over getting in for this month is apparently due in in February, as I found out after emailing my ever-absent tutor. I hope he's got it right and isn't just being a div. I should probably call someone who knows what they're talking about, but I'm always scared they'll say something along the lines of "muahahahaha now we can charge you more fees!"

Pixies

Apparently, at some point I've done too much research for my essay. When I was little my mum and dad used to play a game with me to get me to eat my dinner; they'd turn away and I'd snaffle something off the plate, then they'd pretend to be shocked and I'd tell them the pixie must have eaten it. I think something similar must have been going on when I did all this research! If the pixies want to write the essay for me too I'd be more than happy. Anyway, shopping news, lets get our priorities straight! Gorgeous jade peep toe shoes have been identified. As has the cutest bikini known to man. Saving up commences! The shoes were spotted on a shopping trip in town last week. We also had lunch at the American diner where the half price jewellers used to be, it was proper nice! I'm a sucker for a good ice-creamy milkshake though. More later as I'm forcing myself to work!