I found this fabulous graphic on Witchy Wisdom webpage. I wish I could 'not speak' through winter, and just think, reflect and regenerate. However, for those of you who know me if my verbal torrents ever do cease, then is the time to worry. My mind is never still and it is as if all those thoughts just have to burst forth into the cosmos. Not that they are earth shattering or anything, it is just that there are too many ideas to contain in my head.
After my dear friend's performance last Sunday, I allowed myself to actually stop.. but as is always the case after being on the move so much, I succumbed to a niggling head cold, I am assuming I collected courtesy of delightful fellow Virgin Blue travellers and the recycled airsystems on planes. It happens nearly every time I fly (well at least in Winter).
Stay home I hear you say. Hibernate, rug up and enjoy the peace of winter. I would if I could guarantee avoidance of SADS (seasonal adjustment disorder). Yep, you got it, I am one of those lucky few who were in the same mental health line when the divine being gave out this disorder also.
Not bad, huh... I am becoming and ACRONYM... I hear you laughing K & S.... "typical".
So I am BMDSADS afflicted or is that blessed? I guess it all depends on how my brain chemistry is settling.
At my wonderful unnamed University yesterday I catered for Xmas in July as a social event for the other Postgrads. It was a fun night with a sit down dinner for 14. Really, I am glad there were no more as I was literally run off my feet. Ever tried to cook vegetables on the third floor of one building (whilst bread rolls crisping in separate compartment), steamed vegetables and gravies on the second floor in a microwave, roast lamb in one oven keeping warm (opposite end of thrird floor) and in a completely separate building (ground floor), a roast turkey and roast pork keeping warm. Add to this plum pudding ice-cream in the third floor freezer (same end as roast lamb), then arrange and serve hot soups (one from that same third floor stove top) the other for the vegetarians in the microwave (second floor).
Add to this dips, chips and bickies, wheat-based and gluten free, cakes and mince tarts (wheat and gluten free) and vegetarian option for dessert. Add to this the ususla predilections for alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages.
I am still exhausted today. One friend, S said just think of all the excercise I was getting... but I defy even the fittest normal sized person to do all those stairs (plus getting the stuff there, claened up and packed away, room decorated etc) whilst still carrying an extra 35 - 40 kilos in body weight. (Well that's according to my idea of goal weight). It is exhausting. Like an Olympic marathon.
No-one can know what it is like without ever having been obese... not that pesky little 10ks you need to shift before summer but those pesky 90kg to shift before death!
Add to this that at every social event of this nature there is an accidental smuggness on the part of the marrieds. They know they have someone to go home to and have these occasions regularly with extended family.
I usually spend Christmas Day alone (a hospitality Industry widow). It is nice to have a lie in and watch crap DVDs over one or more bottles of sparkling... but just occasionally I get the twitch for the seemingly 'greener' grass on the other side of the fence.
It is also interesting when a person queries your morality... and you need to step back and look at things from another angle. I pride myslef on being a feminist, yet when questioned about whether or not one should sustain/partake in an affair with a married man, I am decidedly hypocritical. the received wisdom went something like this... what about the sisterhood? What about his wife?
I would like to know just when the sisterhood ever put the needs of another woman over the needs of an individual member? Some of my worst colleagues in the workplace have been self-proclaimed feminists.
I also argue that the nuclear family is a convenient patriarchal model of control exerted over women, much to the benefit of men and detriment of women. despite the fairytale happy-ever after imagery, it is simply a structure which allows men to feel confident of the DNA of their offspring by having a 'captive wife/breeder'. She of course has no such reassurance that hubby is not randomly 'sowing his seed' elsewhere, as primitive mankind is designed to do... after all why so many sperm if that is not the case?
As the mother of a son who I would not have, had it not been for an affair I cannot regret my decisions. Nor should I feel I need to justify them, yet here I am attempting to do so.
The old joke (of mine) goes something like this. At my age, the only single men are gay or living at home with Mother issues. If they are divorced (one or more times) I can guarantee the problem was on the side of the bloke. If they are married they are probably the genetically superior of the species. And if they are out to play... then seriously if the wife is that unaware the marriage is not on the strongest ground in the first place. Also who's to say that there isn't an open relationship at work? Without the freaky couples' sex play, how can anyone know what happens behind suburban fences.
Just how many marriages are marriages in name only. Convenience economically, easier on the kids, easier than starting again, easier than braving the world alone. What ever gets you through the night is what I say, and I'll be damned if I will buy into that all older single women are cougars, predators or whores. Nor are we Nuns either!
All of this is so uppermost in my mind. After recently spending time with a friend in Sydney, we passed the time doing the 'writer-thing' and spent the day couple-watching. It was a revelation, just how much one could tell about the two concerned. She, possessive and insecure constantly playing out ownership marking rituals, the tidying of fluff from the jacket, for him the hand lightly placed on the small of her back when another male approached. I could go on for hours. My journal is bulging with such observances.
Then let's add today... I actually had breakfast at a hotel restaurant. I wanted some good nourishment (all 250mls of it). Every table bar one (and mine) was a couple.
NONE spoke to each other. The men read the papers, the women ate in silence. Perhaps the silences were comfortable... but there were no shared smiles or eyes connecting furtively, and after all this is a tourist resort and 'holiday' destination.
Of my God... spare me this slow death by apathy... but spare me my last years flying totally solo also.
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