Smidge

1. Thou shalt not try to talk to me whilst the following programmes are on TV: Hollyoaks, Come Dine with Me, Masterchef, University Challenge or football games involving Aberdeen or Liverpool FC. You can however go to the shop and get fags and chocolate for me while I sit there with my feet up.

2. Thou shalt not complain about my total and utter addiction to reading emails, Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader on my mobile phone every 5 minutes. I pay the bill not you. Remember that occasionally i’m reading literotica.com and that will be of benefit to you later.

3. Thou shalt not call me a geek because I read science fiction books with space craft on the front cover or because I like Battlestar Gallactica, Firefly or Millennium. Or get wierded out on the occasions when I watch Gossip Girl, 90210, the OC or Skins and read Louise/Tilly Bagshaw or Tasmina Perry instead. I’m a girl, I’m complicated, and that’s why you go out with me.

4. Thou shalt let me sleep with the following celebrities if I ever met them: Jamie Bamber, Nathan Fillion, Jonathan Rhys Meyers or Kate Beckinsale (yes I know that’s a girl, but she’s hot).

5. Thou shalt not complain when I sleep with my back to you in bed, snore, let my cat sleep under the covers next to me curled up behind my knees, fall asleep with the light on, or read until 3am. It is a privilege for you to get into my king sized bed with me and there is plenty of room for you and the cat.

6. Thou shalt not complain when I have made home made spicy lamb burgers and they aren’t spicy enough for you when your version of cooking is sticking frozen chips, frozen onion rings, frozen southern fried chicken things and garlic bread in the oven. At least I try to make things from scratch, have a heart and eat them all up like a good boy. Plus, yes I eat weird things like scotch eggs and cocktail sausages with ketchup. Get over it.

7. Thou shalt give me warning when you wish to have a boy’s night out or in. Talking about the weekend all week and then dumping me at the last minute to get pissed with the boys is not cool. Nor is texting me about how horny you are throughout the night and getting a taxi to mine at 3am and then pass out instead of giving me the good stuff. You can however continue to scrape me off the street when i’ve had 2 bottles of wine and a jeagerbomb and need to go home before midnight. Again.

8. Thou shalt listen to me rant about whichever of my friends I have fallen out with this week, complain about having no good friends, pat me on the back and tell me it will all be fine and that i’m lovely, buy me toffee cup cakes to make me feel better, run me a bath with candles and hand me a glass of red, like you do every time it happens, which is at least once a week. You shalt ignore the fact I act like a child to deserve all this.

9. Thou shalt not laugh at the fact I do no exercise what-so-ever and that I think walking is for fools. I know that I can canoe, run, rock climb, abseil, swim, play hockey, do circuit training like an expert, hip hop dance, dance in general, horse ride, but keep putting them off until next week. Have a heart boy its -1 degrees outside. Start nagging again in June. Yes I procrastinate, but that’s a major part of me!

10. Thou shalt love me for exactly who I am, like I do with you.

The gap between contentment and sorrowfulness is closer than clicking up a speed on your vibrator – some days it can only take a bit of blue sky, a smile on the bus or an extra chance to kiss your boy goodbye to make the world seem a better place. Or maybe, as in my case, it’s hitting pay dirt logging into statcounter to watch a lurker go nowhere. Or to sound less malicious, it’s the freshness of a change of scene away from invading parties that left a shadow over your space.

Actually, I got over the disappointment in myself that I rejoice in bully’s failing in life a long time ago. These days I watch out for karma coming around to bite someone in the ass safe in my foresight that they deserved it.

Being little (and without any obvious ugly stick beatings and a popularity with the boys for more than my tits) meant that school for me was a gauntlet of shoves, hair pulling, ink squirting and never ending repeats of the mantra that sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones-but-words-will-never-haunt-me.  

Yes, ok, you pedantics out there, I know that should say “hurt me”, but haunt seems so much more appropriate. And haunt me they have. I’m having to relearn that I’m a good person, that I’m deserving of friends. That people who clique, follow the crowd, feel like their way of dealing with people is adult and mature and right is not the only way to go about things. That in life, when you reach a crossroads, you can actually say goodbye and confidently take the other path in the knowledge that you aren’t wrong – just different.

Today, i’m happy to be different, i’m happy to be starting to forge my life. I’m just happy.

Kx

Welcome to the new home of Smidge, you’ll notice that it’s not that much different from my old house, but im now on wordpress; hosted by the amazing Cliff Stanford (and all the design sorted out by him as well, to my annoying exacting standards. Bear with him (and me) whilst we iron out the last few problems.

Ill be back posting soon, but in the meantime, have a look around and make sure you add me to your readers, remember that im called “Smidge” now (rather than honestly something that sounded like i travel to places where i can pee on myself!) and make sure you say hi to let me know you made it over here! 

Oh and if you tweet don’t forget to add me too!

Mwah

Kx

For those of you who follow me on twitter or speak to me via email, you’ll know that recently i’ve been rather frustrated, angry, down, pissed off. My life has been like a rollercoaster, full of friendships broken and mended.

Arguments, big or small, tend to overwhelm me. I hate arguing with a passion; I’m incredibly shy, i’m often unable to get my feelings across to the point that i’m sometimes left in physical pain as I can’t get the emotions out.

Anger that is not let out festers and boils over into bitterness and feeling that I’ve been somehow been belittled and bullied.

It’s a vicious circle that knocks my confidence further – however much I try to improve things. Doing one thing for one person hurts another. It’s a situation which I can’t, well, win. But it’s not about winning; it’s about being happy, with friends that are happy with me. Some days I feel like giving up on everything and starting from scratch, changing the whole ‘me’ along the way.

But what’s really frustrating me is that I started this blogging thing as an outlet for my more depressive side, my angry rants, and the things I didn’t want to talk to the ‘real’ world about. Often this means that the things I talk about are more extreme, less happy-happy-joy-joy than my real life. But it meant that I could get things out in the open to myself, get advice from people not connected to the situation and quickly get over it, move on.

But obviously, as I’m not exactly anonymous, over the last 4 years, people in the ‘real world’ have started to read this blog. I know they are there and who they are.

It’s made me censor my writing, my need for headspace, the things that made me blog in the first place.

Its time to do something about this, I can’t go on with this blog not being the real me, juicy, painful, hurtful, sad as it may be.

So, to options. Do I just close this blog and write for no one but myself, buy a diary? Do I go private? Do I move and don’t tell anyone the address, start from scratch? Do I move and let you readers know, but hide from everyone else? Or do I say fuck the consequences, name no names, be myself, and tell folk not to read?

I’m not sure the solution, but right now I need to get things out and I don’t need anymore arguments in my life.

Advice please.

Kx

So, onto my second tag of the weekend, Lis of Last Year’s Girl tagged me to reveal 6 random things about me. This is a difficult one, as I think I did them all in the 10 thing about me at the top of the site. Now I’m going to have to think of 6 more, goddammit.

Ok, here goes,

1. I was born a catholic, raised a protestant and now don’t know what I am. I spent my childhood (and even some time at University) going to church or Christian Union, but one day, well, I just stopped. I still go occasionally when i’m at home (with my mum) but I have no idea whether I’m a believer or not anymore. I’m not sure religion is something I should be confused about. I should know, shouldn’t I?

2. I collect toy monkeys. Ok, I don’t really collect them, people buy them for me, and I have quite a collection of them around my house (in plants, on the TV). My favourite probably has to be ‘evil monkey’ from Family Guy who sits on my fireplace. I also have cuddly monkeys called Opollo and Starbuck (see number 3).

3. I’m a closet geek to my friends. A few of them know about this here blog and read it (probably in case I write anything about them – hiya – *waves*) so know I can be a bit of an internet geek, but what they don’t know is that I also read heavy duty hard and space opera type science fiction (Reynolds, Ian M Banks, Peter F Hamilton, Asimov, Benford) and a lot of the softer stuff (Bradbury, Wells, Philip K Dick). Current top 3 books – The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds. My favourite TV show has to be Battlestar Gallactica, I even like the 70s version. Oh and a mention should go out for Firefly as well. Not buffy tho, or Star Trek.

4. Up to my current boyfriend, I have cheated on everyone I have been out with. I’m not proud of this fact, but I can at least admit that during my 20s I fought commitment fears by being a cheat. I generally didn’t even feel guilty. But I am now a changed woman, I promise.

5. I have not been able to give up smoking despite the fact I actually know its killing me. Yes I am that stupid.

6. I have major confidence issues, and paranoia. Oh and possibly depression. But I hate self indulgent people who use this kind of mental problem as a crux to stop them living their lives. Ok maybe if it was diagnosed I could be treated, but to be honest as I have said before, I prefer my life with rough edges, however hard my personality makes it for me.

Ok, phew I did it. Now it’s your turn, I tag:

Josh @ The Monkey Made Me Do It
Sarcastically Bitter
TishTash @ My Telephone Booth
Tara @ The Brain
Dan @ The Art of Panic
A @ Snarky Much
All Round Newbie
Andy @ Wild ARS Chase

Mwah

Kx

P.s if you dont want to put up another meme on your blog (or you hate them) you can add it to the comments like Josh has done..im interested in finding out more about my readers! x

First up, a little bit of news for a snowy Monday morning (and im wearing 3 inch heals, good one!)…I’m an auntie for the first time! My little sister had Ben Edward on Saturday morning (their time in Oz, I got the message whilst pissed on Friday night). I’ve seen the pictures and he’s gorgeous!

Ok, i’m not particularly broody myself, I’m in no desperate rush to splice my self to someone else and give up my love of having a dam good time, but boy do my ovaries hurt when I see him – Euro blonde blue-eyed babe + Aussie Chinese/French = a model of the future…

Anyways, over the weekend i’ve been tagged twice. (Thanks guys for giving me lots of work to do).

First up Kylie from over at Random Thoughts as tagged me to do a quiz (sorry hon, but there were far too many questions, most of them very American, so i’ve cut it down to a just a few). But here we go…

When was the last time you splurged on a gift for yourself?
This is called ‘shopping’ – we girls do it a lot. The last thing I bought was probably a couple of new tops in the sales. I’m a bit of a cheapskate though and don’t like spending money on fancy labels, although i’m currently lusting after a gorgeous pair of Ted Baker shoboots, plus there is a Paul and Joe cape I have my eye on…ahem. I’m good at buying presents for myself but i’m awful at buying presents for people as if leave everything to the last minute or forget!

How often do you text message?
About every 5 minutes, unless I’m at work and then I email every 5 minutes. I’m a bit communications obsessed, blog, text, email, twit, facebook… I think id have a heart attack if I lost my mobile phone, or didn’t have it with me for a day.

Is there someone you’d like to fix things with?
There are possibly some bridges to be built here and there with a couple of friends – and some old friends I should be getting back in touch with. If I have made a new years resolution it’s probably to make more of an effort.

Do you give out second chances too easily?
Yes, as i’ve been forgiven in the past I now generally forgive and forget; people make mistakes too. Unless you hit on my man, cheat on me, steal from me or be two-faced, then you can go feck off.

What’s the next big decision you will have to make?
What kind of soup to eat for lunch.

Do you know what you will wear tomorrow?
Yes, black trousers, high heals, black top, big necklace. The same as I wear every day; makes things easy. My wardrobe is black, brown, cream and dark blue jeans; i’m a bit of a creature of habit. I’m regretting the 3 inch heals today; i’m not being very ladylike in them. I am learning ok?

Your motivation for tomorrow?
To get through to Wednesday when I have a day off to go shopping in Glasgow.

Are you ever purposely irritating?
Yes a lot, I love playing devil’s advocate. I’m also good at being purposely obtuse just to annoy people.

What was the last thing you used you debit card for?
Don’t have one, nor do I have a credit card. I believe in cash only. Ok I know i’m a luddite.

Do you have any text messages that you would be embarrassed to let your mom read?
Yep, I’m not really a nice girl, all part of a healthy sex life

How old would you be when you finally have kids/ or next kids?
At this rate i’m going to die with 50 cats and dote on my sisters kids instead.

Do you/did you ever have dreams of being a rock star?
As I have a phobia of singing, NO.

What advice would you give to a new blogger?
Find your own voice, find blogs you like to read not just the ‘celebs’, have full RSS feeds, don’t over do your page with annoying widgets; especially music.

What was your favourite book as a child?
The Ha Ha Bonk Book

What is the coldest place/state that you ever visited?
-15 in Gothenburg Sweden, I had awful toothache and it kept freezing and re-freezing my tooth – I was in agony.

What is your favourite quote?
“all that is gold does not glisten, all that wander are not lost” The Lord of the Rings.

Ill tag….

Paula @ Insert my blog name here
Emma @ Because i like Waffles and Blethers
Miss America @ Bygones

Now if I haven’t tagged you, don’t think you have been let off easy as Lis from Last Years Girl has also tagged me to write 6 random things about myself which ill be posting later…

Hope you all had a great weekend..

Mwah Kx

As any aspiring blog-egrity knows there are a number of hard and fast rules for giving your readers a good time. One is giving full RSS feeds (something I didn’t used to do, but now bugs the shite out of me if you don’t), the other is the need for a regular feature or hook.

Now, I’ve been frantically racking my brain to come up with something as half as good as Andy of WildARSChase’s “What I learned from Cosmo” feature or maybe joining in with TMI Thursdays (such as this one from Brookem at Shrinkering Hearts) or doing a kind of miscellany like Nutty Cow or LisSara.

But that would be plagiarism and as recently someone has done that to me, it’s just not on.

Anyways, the other website I sort of work for (Edinburgh Clubbing Community Forums) regularly has a thread every month about In’s and Out’s (and i’m not referring to how many shags out members have had in the last month) so i’m going to bastardise it here as kind of minutiae of my life, things ive done, things i’ve seen.

So, welcome to my inaugural feature creature… just for you I present Wee-Travelling’s “good and ungood”.

….this week I’m recommending a good film and warning against an awful book…

Good – Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire

If you haven’t seen Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 days later (we’ll miss out The Beach), and Sunshine you better get yourself acquainted with British Cinema quickly because you are missing out on a potential new favourite director (along with Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro). Boyle’s latest outing is a hard smack in the face with a big bag of naughty sugar, a feel good hit without the laughs, a guilty pleasure it’s a crime not to watch. Beautifully shot and with acting so raw that the kids in the film are probably getting the same dream break as the main character Jamal Malik. A violent, traumatic film that ultimately has romance at its heart, this is one not to miss even if you have to resort to kidnapping a date.

Ungood- Neal Stephenson’s Anathem

I’m a massive fan-geek of Stephenson, loving everything he has written from cyber punk in Snow Crash to nanotechnology in The Diamond Age (TV series coming soon) to code breaking in Crptonomicon and alternative history in The Baroque Cycle. So I was in a state akin to arousal when I spotted that he had a new book out.

What a mistake; the only use for this novel is to scare the cat off to his own bed via the means of a cracking whack on the head as I pass out whilst reading this load of codswallop. 800 hardback pages mostly written in a language that’s trying very hard to be funny (Bulshytt) or close but different for no apparent reason (The Ret instead of The Net) would put even a hardened sci-fi reader into a long coma.

Ill go with the Washington Post’s critique “fundamentally unoriginal”, “grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull”. I’ve yet to finish it but can’t see it getting any better. Avoid.

Suggestions for my next good and ungood welcome, it wont all be reviews, i might talk about football or vibrators or good and ungood sex…choices choices…

Kx

Between the memes and the bandwagon jumping (de-lurking day went well in the end didn’t it? a couple of you outed yourselves anyways!) regular readers of this little blog will know that my most recent bugbear has been my (perceived) lack of friendships. This is part two of that topic, if you aren’t a regular reader or are a goldfish then you can catch up here.

The other night, after guzzling half a bottle of red wine, I may or may not have got myself a little too immersed in Dead Poets Society, started waving my glass at the TV rather violently and shouting to myself “carpe diem! seize the day boys! make your lives extraordinary!” along with Robin Williams.

Ahem.

But a month ago, two weeks ago even, I would have said I needed to take my own drunken advice quick smart before I was swallowed up by the avalanche of clothes that is my bed and never to be seen again. That was until last weekend when I got an invitation to meet up with a fellow blogger who was visiting Edinburgh for the weekend, her of the-best-name-ever, Miss Catspuke. It was time to put my money where my blog is and start my real life with a good old – Carpe Diem! Carpe Diem!

(Ok that’s enough of the DPS references, it’s getting boring and the lovely Robert Sean Leonard is now much better employed in House.)

Actually, I don’t have much to say about the actual meet up apart from Miss CP (and her friends) was lovely and welcoming and not at all scary, and I wish she lived here goddammit; plus Miss CP has been nice enough to blog about it before and after here – you don’t really need a re-hash from me.

But, what really interested me about the night was the reaction of people to how we met. We got bemused, amused, confused, wierded out and a couple of all-out ‘freaks!’ type reactions (from the perma-tanned annoying one btw CP). I’m not sure one person (apart from the pair of us) just went ‘cool’ and moved on.

It seems that whilst we may be caught up in our little world of daily blog posts, readers, blog communities (like BritBloggers and 20sb), the twitter-world and the internet in general, to the outside world we bloggers are a strange unfathomable breed. And do you know what? I forget it all the time.

In many ways outside the blogging world the internet is cool. Cool people use Facebook, cool kids use Bebo, even the coolest people in the world – musicians (ok, that’s debateable) – use Myspace. Social networking is widely agreed to be the future of social contact as we know it. Most people, even if they don’t use twitter, put up a status update now and then – microblogging if you will – plus photos, comments and details of their every day lives for people to view and respond to. Just like blogging.

The difference is social networking (Facebook et al) has yet to step beyond those friends we already have, think we should have or still want to have from school. When was the last time you spoke to all 200 ‘friends’ you have on there? Not very often I expect. But you still count them as friends don’t you? No one looks at you like you are weird for being mates on facebook with someone you haven’t seen since you were six and wouldn’t know what to say to them even if you did meet up.

Dependent on how much you reveal, readers of your blog have a chance to become real friends, whether this is in real life or just online, even more so because they have a massive start over someone you could randomly be introduced to by a friend of a friend or have added on FB. They know, they get it, they understand, and they blog about all that crap too.

Maybe I’m protesting too much the case of blogging, but if I get asked one more time if meeting up was a fellow blogger (and now friend) was a ‘date’ i’m going to scream.

Loud.

Kx

I know, I know, i’m behind with the bandwagon jumping this week and to be honest I don’t know why i’m bothering as I think most of my readers (that’s you 5 girlies, and Josh) actually already comment loads, but i’m interested to see if there are any more of you out there – plus i’m always looking for more blogs to read…

Anyways, it was de-lurking day (ok, i’m not sure exactly when it was) and it has a little logo, like this…

So, off you go, de-lurk yourself, get out of your readers, say hi (and if you normally comment anyways please say hello too, so I don’t look totally sad and scary for doing this).

Thanks. Kx

Post on blog meet ups to come later today…

I must apologise before you start to read, but this is another rather introspective post from the bowels of my sad little mind, but if you’ll bear with me, you probably see light at the end of the tunnel…..*

Over the last few months (or years probably) I’ve developed IBS. Now for those of you who don’t know about it, or have it, or knows someone who has it, IBS is a rubbish condition generally brought on by evil stress that does weird things to your digestive system. You really don’t need to hear any more about it from me, as im sure if you are the kind of person who needs the yucky details you can look it up on the internets. But this isn’t actually about my IBS (or about any of my other medical issues I’ve sneaked into the conversation). Instead it’s about the stress. My stress.

Now lets just say until a couple of years ago I was a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, deal-with-everything-life-throws-at-me kind of girl, someone for whom the concept of stress was as alien as ever being above 5 foot tall. Of course I worried about things (commitment, friends, whether how much was too much cake) and I spent as much time ranting to my friends / blogging about as any sane normal person.

I scoffed at stress. Stress like middle-age spread wasn’t ever going to get me. No sir-ee. In fact I thrived on pressure; I was lazy if I didn’t have enough to do, in fact if I had anything less than an in-tray/inbox running at less than 100% capacity I procrastinated so badly nothing gots done.

I was the ultimate had it all girl – long term man, big mortgage, demanding high-ish powered job, a large joint salary, potential kids and marriage, id even presented papers at 5 international conferences to people way more senior than me without blinking an eye. The ultimate had it all life.

There wouldn’t be any point in this post if nothing had changed.

At some point in the past few years I let the stress of it all get on top of me. I stalled, I stopped. Somewhere along the line I decided that I wasn’t good enough for my friends, my job, my family, my man. I just wasn’t good enough. And soon, like any self-fulfilling prophecy, it all came true, I lost everything apart from the job and even in that I lost ground over my colleagues. A self induced fall from grace. And I’ve been wondering whatever the hell happened ever since.

But, I sat myself down over the holidays (how American i’m becoming!) and gave myself a kick up the arse. I’ve decided to stop feeling sorry for how I treated myself a few years ago. I might be at rock bottom confidence wise right now, but there is only one way to go on this wheel of fortune.

So, 2009 is for me about building. I know I don’t want to reach those dizzy heights of having it all again. I don’t want to be screamingly loud, outgoing, or to be the centre of attention, but to find friends who like me for who I am, not who I think I should be. I don’t want to be a high flyer again, but I want to do my job well and with flair. I want to be able to get out of bed every morning with my IBS under control and energy to face the day.

And I’ve already started on a plan…

*as have the poo pun’s

Mwah

Kx