twangypearl the elastic girl

comfort zone

Ouch, I've been learning.

At no point in my life have I more frequently had the feeling I am driving a 1974 Mini in a Formula One race; where the Mini is my poor, underpowered brain,  you understand. It's all frantically learning on the fly, rushing around with the doors rattling, engine roaring, gears grinding, overheating madly. For a sociable hermit like myself who stages an internal battle every day simply as to whether to just stay at home or make myself go out and make the world reckon with me, it's been a challenge. Character-building, you could say.

[Hands up the introverts reading this - I would guess that amongst bloggers, introverts represent more than the 25% of the general population, does that seem reasonable? Tell me about being one, if so. Go on, share.]

All this being Out There has taught me some stuff, which I am very excited to share with you. For instance, I have had to Speak Publicly, (DREAD) recently, and stumbled upon the following solution to the sweats and shakes. This is inside information, mind, but the answer is:

SHEER EXHAUSTION

Yes! Turns out if you are really, really tired, you just can't be bothered to get nervous. You just want to go to sleep. You don't care! You're welcome!

However! I don't know if it's just the tiredness, I am burnt out, or if at my advanced age my memory is simply full, (surely that happens?) but I have been making some fantastically silly mistakes recently:

TWANGY to JB (in reference to Mad Men): Guess what, they made Tuesday Jones put on loads of weight!

Yes, yes. Completely crackers. Why Tuesday and not Monday or Thursday, you might ask? I have no idea. Apparently, in my brain, Tuesday is considered a feasible name for a woman. But not Saturday or Sunday. That's just silly? Oh, I don't know.

See also:
My discovery this week that Donna Summer was not actually Diana Ross. Entirely separate people! ASTONISHING.

A classic, worthy of my first visit to NYC, at some point during which I realised that it's the FLAT-iron building, like, you know, a flat iron, not the FLAH-tiron building.

Well. That's it for the moment, I think. More of this half-baked nonsense later.

Your overheated
T

It's 12 months

since KDid died, that quiet, good-hearted man.

When I was young I thought when you grew up somehow you'd be invested with powers that would make you strong. You'd be able to cope, you'd be adult, capable. Sure, things might make you sad, but not too much, you'd manage. You'd put on your suit and good shoes and go to the funeral. You wouldn't cry. You'd know things that would comfort you. You'd know that lives were long, fair, logical. You'd have made a leap, somewhere along the way, and become life-confident. You'd be in control.

Now I realise that was mostly the work of my protective parents and that living is a continuum, rather than a series of separate experiences. This isn't a rehearsal, I have painfully realised, there will not be a montage sequence, there are no shortcuts, you do have to learn the hard way, and it can indeed be too late. It is later than you think. Success is a matter of luck and privilege, not just working hard and making good decisions. Life will crack you open. You can only hope this makes you a better person, more alive, more present. More appreciative, more understanding.

Now I understand that the big whopper of a lesson of my middle years is that joy can co-exist with sadness, and this finally really does have the truthful ring of adulthood. For the good times are painfully precious. Any moment you have to sit in the sun with your friends, or banter with a stranger on the bus, any chance to watch a vast golden moon rise, sing rousing South African anthems in a choir or have the cat on your knee vibrating with purrs, is achingly beautiful.

So we remember him, and try to enjoy our many good memories of him.

Kindly readers, I hope you're well, and to have happier things to talk about soon.
I have missed this. More soon.
xx
T

 

Mr Blue Sky

Most improbably, I have finished my cone project in plenty of time for hand-off this evening, an event which will require me to walk for 10 mins, take a bus, walk for another 20mins, (or MAYBE, I'll just take a taxi, though that kind of thing makes me as nervous as W4I. Apparently I believe a taxi is the thin end of the wedge that will inevitably lead to a online gambling addiction, thousands of euros of debt and end with my living under a bridge) knock on a door I have never seen before, go: Martin? in hopeful tones if a man answers or: Hi! Is Martin there? if a woman answers. Then I will dump deliver the Big Black Portfolio and SKIP SKIP SKIP away feeling OH-SO-LIGHT and who even cares what it looks like anymore? I've got rid, as they say on Corrie.

I've been having a bit of a time of it. Do you remember this, kindly readers?

This is what it's been like, for months, but with extra juggling and exhaustion-induced despair/irrational thoughts. I am so burned out I am actually a Walkers crisp, and those illustrations still need to be done by end of month. (Those fecking things - it's like trying to outrun your own shadow. It's getting mystical, as this point.) While this is just feasible, I am reminded of that saying about people who have been made partner in a law practice: It's like winning a pie-eating contest. And your prize is more pie.

Next week, my students have exams, an event that involves a vast amount of forms called (things like) Learner's Assessment F11-R456. On the other hand, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Only! 6! weeks! to! the! end! of term! Holiers needed URGENTLY.

Other things I have noticed of late:

• The JB has been away for the last week, at a conference. In his absence I have been shocked to discover my breakfast dishes are still there, lying around in grey water, when I get home after school. Proof he does do dishes. Huh! I thought I did Everything Around Here. That's the thing about housework, isn't it? It's only noticed if it's not done.
  
  
• Also. Yes. What was the other thing.
  
  
• Ah. Our floor in The Hotel Tallafornia now hosts a weekly vist from Slimming World. A whole world of slimming - imagine! Continents of svelteness and seas of self-confidence! I am reassured by its logo every morning: Slimming World: Because [I am] amazing. Huh, ta, Slimming World.
  
  
• I think, anyway.
  
  
• It seems that the Authority may be sorting something out with regard to India opening - soon-ish. Also hopeful signs float over Florida. Too tired to be excited, but I presume I am, really.
  
  
• Alrighty then. I am going to go and do the drop-off, I reckon.

Be well, friends.

xx

T

 

 

 

thinking

Hello!

Here I am.

By rights I should have nearly finished that project from hell, that suffocating paper avalanche, but, most confusingly, the deadline has been moved to an as yet unknown date in the next (up to) four weeks. The goalposts not so much moved, that is disorientating enough, this time, they have dashed off into the mist, most likely to pop up and gurn in my face in a few days. It's really odd, what this GO GO, NO, STOP, HURRY and WAIT does to a person. And re-GO GO GO. Me adrenals are knackered. Awkwarder yet is the fact that the old friend who got me this job thinks he is doing me a massive favour, which of course he is, but you know, Too Much of a Good Thing. It's like being asked to sit down at a magnificent banquet and eat it all in 10 minutes. Also, I don't know how to tell him not to pile another one on top of this without seeming horribly ungrateful.

In the meantime, I somehow defaulted my way into a show with some intimidatingly well-known artists in mid-April and also somehow must wearily regird my loins in time for that. Oh holiday, wherefore art thou? I keep thinking of a wonderful day when I can.. not work! You know! Sort of just.. be!

Not to moan incessantly about my charmed life. Ehem.

Apropos of nothing, I enjoyed Spike's birthday party enormously. I know one is supposed to be shocked at the speed at Which They Grow, but for whatever reason I am surprised that he is still only seven. He's been around forever! Shouldn't he be in college by now? And Dazzle is still only three. Three! Anyway, be that as it may, his grandmother's cousin was there, a woman reputed to be a blurter, shall we say. (Read: MAD AS A HATTER.) Famously she once observed, on seeing her niece's husband: A poor specimen.  And about my brother she declared: An ADONIS!
HAHAHA. An Adonis!

Oh! A news item! I went to see that counsellor. He turned out to be a twinkly older man who effortlessly sprang up the six floors of the tall Georgian building in which he "sees" people. He picked up The Whole Sorry Tale and the dynamic very quickly and it was strangely comforting to hear that All This Is Actually Not My Fault from an objective and professionally wise person. He had some enlightening things to say on the subject of how I am prone to carrying the can and trying to make All The Things Nice for everyone. (Sorry about the caps. I can't help it! I Have Caps Disorder!) which I now see as something I learned from my mother in the face of my father, he of the hothead. One hates to be a Walking Cliché, but there you have it. I try to manage, to calm, to smooth. What a pain in the arse. He concluded that in his opinion we were not in crisis, per se, but that he'd always make time for us if we should need to see him. This is a big comfort. Also, as I suspected, the JB, seeing I came back feeling better, has asked for Twinkly's details. I will do what I can (without being a total pain, one hopes) to encourage him to follow through, because my poor JB does seem by turns depressed and giddy. (Must not make self responsible! Must not manage! Must not take all worries on self!)

[If I had a penny for every time I've been asked the dreaded question "what are you thinking about?" (guaranteed to make my mind go blank) in my life, I'd have a euro at least. I must have a thoughtful aspect, sadly an illusion, for I am usually thinking about marmalade, or the contents of my fridge if, indeed, anything at all. Quite a bit of the time, I'm just coasting mindlessly. Twinkly observed at one point: I can see your mind going, there. What are you thinking? And I was wondering how they got that sidetable with a marble base up all those stairs.]

What are you thinking, readers? Heh.

I have been visiting you, hastily, but I've really missed cheering myself up with your company, continuing our conversation, and staring out the window, thinking about very little.

 Soon, friends, soon.

xx
T

 

For upcoming show.

the latest

Oh dear, the tempus has fuggited again.

• I have a huge project on, with a totally ridiculous deadline and no matter how hard I work, I just can't keep up with it. It's just a mean series of false summits. The kittalo is doing what she can to hinder by leaping deftly on my drawing table, and walking up and down casually on my work. Yes, kindly reader, I could shoo her off, but I am too cowardly. She draws the line at biting or scratching but her hiss is a terrible, primal thing. Words hurt, Kitty.

• I've come out in a rash of Margarets. Does this happen to you, I'd like to know? There you are, meandering along aimlessly, (in my case. Others may move purposefully.) and you come across a series of Rodneys, or Sharons. What can it mean?
  
  (Isn't it interesting to see the way names come into fashion and then slowly move out of it? I don't mind my name, as such, but it has a bit of a sixties/seventies vibe about it due to the popularity of a certain actress at that time. On the other hand, I can't think of a more suitable one. Do you have an alternative name you fancy for yourself? I think I'd have to invent a name. I am not sure if I am cool with the ready pigeon-hole-ability a name that already exists gives you. You know? The way it telegraphs that you are a certain type of person, before you have even said a word. On the other hand, a lifetime of spelling Qwansoolie (or whatever) might be a bit of a bore.)

•  The reception area in the Hotel Tallafornia is disappointingly devoid of action of late, with just a few Pencostal leaflets fluttering around. Thrillingly, however, some mannequin heads have been sighted being transported down the corridor. HOW FANTASTIC. A girl in my class said with total confidence that there must be a dentist school opening in the building. I love the idea of that. I don't know if I would love going to a dentist who trained on mannequin heads, not being made of plastic myself, but the idea I love.

• It's anniversary (of my miscarriage) time of year and I am occasionally assailed with sadness, usually briefly. Such things never go away, do they?
  
  
• In related news, I feel all grown-up-and-shit, for I have booked an appointment with a counsellor, next week. I feel nervous about it, so I am telling myself it's just a conversation. One hopes an effective one, for it's not exactly cheap, this doing of the right thing.

• Oh, sigh.

• Our adoption plans are still stalled, waiting for the Authority to get it together to organise things with the Indian authority. This is massively frustrating.

• Oh, re-sigh.

• On the other hand, it's spring-ish, and some day, you know, in the future, I'll have finished this project and will be able to go out. Out! To town! Or even to another county!

For the moment, I content myself with a walk, if I can prise myself off this chair. I'll be fantasizing about going on holiday, somewhere warm. How about you?

Tell me, ah, go on.

T

first world problems

I'm in that dopey, la-la, mood, where I keep half-doing things and getting distracted and half-doing something else. I have loads to do, I am sure of it. But you know when you don't quite know what to do first, and you think: I know, I'll write a post? And then I'll feel better, having given myself the illusion that I have achieved something.

• My laptop gave up the ghost last week. When you try to turn it on, it starts patting its pockets and saying: Oh, ssshit. Now, where did I put my hard drive? Hang on, I am sure it's here somewhere. It must be... oh, how embarrassing, maybe it's... no...
  Then it makes some unreasonably loud electronic pings at you, while presumably it searches around its flat frantically, throwing stuff around, looking for its vital bits.
  Nothing, according to the young man in the laptop clinic, can be saved from it. It is officially banjaxed. I am trying to take this in cavalier fashion. After all, I did back up sometimes and what the hell, it's just a sort of forced de-clutter of all the detritus I collected over the years. Onward, and less encumbered by crappy freeware programmes!

• Likewise banjaxed is my car. Battery is defunct.

• Teaching is making me feel a bit lonely. I want to be on the other side of the desk, where you have friends to complain to - it's so much funner, more collegial. Boo. But, oh, fellow teachers! Oh! It's all (almost) worth it for that wondrous moment of squeeeee! freedom when you escape from the classroom until the next time! OH THAT BIT IS MARVELLOUS, isn't it?

• PKitty, though, now, the kitty, has been doing her best to cheer me up with little gifts. True, had I been in a position to choose, I might have preferred a pink Moleskine sketchbook, or perhaps some lavendar soap rather than - say - a half-dead fieldmouse, but, you know how it is, it's the thought that counts. So far I have not witnessed the delivery of the afore-mentioned rodents into the kitchen for bragging purposes but the JB has reported that she even went to the trouble of putting on a mini Christians and Lions type show for his entertainment. Mousey, mousey, I release you! Ha! No, I don't! Yes, I do! NO, don't be silly, OF COURSE I DON'T! CRUNCH.
  And so on. Anything to offer on this, anyone? I understand Nature is all red and rude, and so forth, but I feel sorry for the mice. She's so mean.

Here she is, the murderer herself:

I fear she is about that fat. She might have lost a few ounces recently. My human friend R, to the cat, when she came to visit:
Ooh, you're enoooormous!
BODY FASCISM, that is.

Anyway. How goes the mood with you?
T

 

learning

IS IT JUST ME, I WONDER

A couple of weekends ago:

TWANGY, seeing an opportunity to bond with DAZZLE, (the three-year-old niece) while the rest of the family are engaged in an interminable game of Capitalist Market Forces Monopoly, extends 'claws' and roars, experimentally:
Rrrrrar! I'm a tiger.

DAZZLE smiles indulgently.

TWANGY: What are you?

DAZZLE: I'm a people.

How deflating.

---

Further conversation, this time with a student:
ALEX(not real name!): So, in relation to.. I just want to understand. My head is wrecked here. When you copy a file, where is that?
TWANGY: Emmm. Well. What? It goes on to the clipboard.
ALEX :  But.. where is the clipboard?
TWANGY (not feeling terribly patient at this point): It's just out there, Alex. In virtual space.
In your computer's RAM or something, Alex.
ALEX: But. It's  just these notes don't talk about the clipboard. I think these notes are a bit...
TWANGY considers a rapid exit out of the window.

Speaking of the Hotel Tallafornia, and the "learning" that takes place therein with my unemployed would-be designers, it should come as no surprise that we are dealing, per usual, with the Usual Suspects. The same ould cast of characters. There's the one with the attitude, there are the moaners, there are the gigglers, there are those afflicted with shyness, those encumbered with laziness. The sickly, the smart, the motivated, the dense. 'Twas ever thus, was it not, teachers, educators, librarians? The moaners were moaning at me last week, and I had this lightbulb revelation: these people (whispered The Little Voice of Obviousness) are not my friends. In this relationship, here,  it's my job to hold the thing together, and be respected.

This is stunningly self-evident, I do realise. Maybe it's the chronic informality of the Irish, but up to now, I have always assumed that friendliness, a general enthusiasm for the subject, respect for their efforts and a pretence at a flat hierarchy would see me through this teaching gig. Now, I realise that to act as if there is no difference between us, except that I just happen to be standing at the other side of the table is just not going to work. After all, I am in charge of time-keeping, and there is money involved in that, this being a state-sponsored training course. So, how to play it? Shall I become (gets carefully into American character) a 'hardass'? Would this be better for all concerned? Thoughts on this welcome. What is your style?

I've told you about the hotel as venue of higher education in this brave new world, haven't I?
We are in the one heated room on the fifth floor of a mostly empty office block, (itself mysteriously part of the hotel), surrounded by empty offices like this:



It's so fantastically creepy, like some weird art installation. The other morning, the previously abandoned and chilly reception area had leaflets scattered around and a big poster over it:
THE PENTECOSTALS
Presumably they checked-in-but-can-never-leave the night before? Yet no sign of them since.
And then, odder yet, and, to use  The Young People's favourite word, 'totally random':


Bridge tables sprang up overnight. Bridge tables. 

What next, friends? The Annual Trapeze Artists' Convention? The League of Capuchin Monkey Handlers? YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE.

Rest assured, I will keep you posted.

T

matching

Breaking news:

• My poor, forlorn, lonelyheart socks have progressed as far as a detention centre on the top of a bench, where they await their fate. Shall their One True Partner come and bail them out, miraculously? Shall they? Or shall they be imprisoned in a plastic bag in the middle of the spare room, to be thrown out into the actual bin, in as soon as - oh! - anytime in the next year or two.
  
  Edge-of-your-seat stuff, I am sure you'll agree.

• In other news, and speaking of The Spare Room: we did finally get our declaration from the Adoption Authority. It came on paper headed solemnly with the harp symbol that signifies officialdom in Ireland. (If it's got a harp on it, it's serious and may be even worth something. DON'TFECKINGLOSEITYOUBIGEEJIT, MammyIreland might be presumed to be telling us with it. ) Some people have described this as an empowering moment, akin to being pregnant, but I just thought: Oh, there you go when the JB opened it. Since then, though, there has been a general glow of satisfaction, interpersed with the odd chilly moment of GAAHJAYSTHISISREALLYREALLYREAL.


• Since that day, we have been up to our elbows in paperwork. EVERYTHING has to be negotiated for, awaited, copied, scanned, signed, notarised, apostilled. It's like the Bureaucracy Olympics. We are getting more and more friendly with our solicitor, a floppy-haired, good-hearted fusspot of a young fellow who hangs out in Dublin 1.
  
  
• I admit the JB has done A Large Part of This Mental Power-lifting/Bureaucratising. Good husband! He is coming up in the polls, as I regularly tell him.
  
  
• It does seem wrong that we are required to survive this long battle of wits, which seems more like the psychological equivalent of an IronMan competition, and less like anything remotely to do with parenting, and must surely mean less bloody-minded people - who none the less might be really good parents - fall by the wayside and give up?


• Life continues to be packed to bursting. Whywhywhy is that, tell me? Don't you remember the hours and hours in your youth, where there was nothing to do, only loll around and watch The Multicoloured Swapshop? And it was good? Why is life so franticfranticfrantic? I am that harrassed state of mind where you miss your stop on the Luas, and only raise your head when the name Fortunestown is called out. Fortunestown? You've never even heard of such a place. Or where you say to yourself: Ooh, look, if the knife slips now, it could easily (but keep cutting) - OW! Or narrowly avoid being run over by another bus not the one you really wanted to catch, or sundry other unforced errors, as they say in tennis. The poor kitty nearly got an iron in the head this morning. I could have killed the kitty! With a flying iron! That fell as I was foolishly moving the board without removing it first!

I need to take a sabbatical from my own life. How about you? Tell me the secret of calmness. Kittalo will thank you for it.

T

 
I WILL. I'LL THANK YOU.

Guess where I've been

Clue: I met up with my by now lovely friend of some years (!), Valery for a hot chocolate, (thank you, inventor of the internet, for my internet friends) and made the bonus meeting of her DP, who was very kind to us. It was excellent fun. I walked around the town with my mother, and went to see the Rembrandts and the markets, and drank mint tea in hotel foyers.

The morning we had to leave, Valery's DP made us a very good coffee, on which I got a bit drunk, we ate chocolate sprinkles and biscuits in their lovely kitchen, and then we walked through the charming streets to Centraal Station and we were back in Dublin and the resumption of normal life just. like. that.

I would be afflicted with anti-climax, but it happened so fast, it all seems like a series of brightly lit snapshots in my head. City breaks, folks. Love the compressed quality thereof.

Normal life resumes, as it does. I did some sock-sorting last night, for instance, and I almost managed to throw away the single ones who have been waiting for their partners to show up lo these many months. Tune in soon for more of this thrill-a-minute stuff.

T

stream of semi-consciousness

Wobbly travel drawing from commute

[The following is copied and pasted from a document I typed up while at the place of employment, in a state of giddy boredomus extremis. Not entirely sure if enough oxygen was getting through to my brain at the time, so consider yourself forewarned.)

Well! How are you? A good moving on to 2012 was had by all, I hope? Twenty twelve, folks. Do you remember how spaceshippy that sounded when we were teenagers? And yet, still no beaming-up! I don't know.

Here I am in Hotel Recession on the hinterlands of Dublin, teaching my class. They are working away busily and I am terribly, terribly bored. Every so often I circle the room, and lurk behind them, hoping for a answerable, not too challenging question to come my way. And it's only 11.16. We've already had our morning break. Hysterical shriek of disbelief! I can't get the internet on my laptop, AND my fancy Christmas present phone is banjaxed for reasons known only to itself, proving once more that technology is worse than useless when it breaks because it creates the expectation that yes! we are contactable at all times! Aren't we modern and fantastic? Except when NOT, and we feel silly and cheated. I have a crick in my neck - it's all creak-ouch-yikes and I feel sort of vaguely broken, because it's January and the other morning, I woke up and smelled the January air of loss. It's like there's a seasonal alarm clock in my cells, waiting for this time of of the year.

Sitting here, all abandoned by modern technology, a person's thoughts are apt to turn all random and profound. I've been thinking a bit about the parenting I received, and how it's affected me. I have been thinking  what it was to have an absent, workaholic father, half-suffocating, half-neglecting. Like DramaBoy. Not much like the JB, who is relatively sane and present, all things considered. I've been doing a lot of reading on mental health, (research for the show I am in) and it's hard not to point and say, ooh! Borderline Personality Disorder! Bi-polar disorder! That's my da! And it's suddenly clear to me that I have chosen to be loved by people who confirm my own bias about myself. And I have been trying to fix my relationship with my father through my romantic relationships. What did I think, that if I could make them love me, like I want them to, that I'll feel better, somehow?

I did think that. Or I acted as if I did, which is the same thing. Thank God for the JB. If I'd married Dramaboy, ooh. I dread to think.

In another hour and a bit, (ARG. THAT IS LONG) we'll all convene in the kitchen where we'll boil water in the white plastic kettles, one of which leaks and the other emits a ferocious smell of burning rubber, which can't be particularly good, can it? My co-teacher on this course says huddling in the kitchen for lunch with the 20 strong class makes her feel that she should leave so they can complain about her. But there is only half an hour in which to eat, (a terrible state of affairs!) so I stick it out.

So! Some resolutions, for the season that is in it:

• Draw every day, one a day.
  
• Make a cartoon every month.
• Get therapy.
• Go/keep running.
• Be bold. Don't get the willies. Or don't act on them, anyway. And then:
  
• Hope that it's true that fortune favours the bold.

How about you? Have you resolved?

Whatever your resolutions  might be, and wherever you find yourselves, I wish you all such a happy new year.

x
T