Slow and steady

I was woken far too early this morning by the guys who had come to replace the curtains.  My annoyance disappeared quickly the moment I saw the curtains I had picked hanging up - they're the perfect mix of provencal and crisp botanical drawings and match the rest of my room very nicely.

Sometimes I forget that we've been living in this house for over four years now; it still feels like such a new experience.  But things are falling apart.  My old earth toned, striped curtains were starting to rip to shreds.

This weekend was spent doing other lazy things amid frenzied bouts of work.  I was so exhausted yesterday that I crawled into bed without touching my Nanowrimo word count and had to make up for it by blowing through 3,000 words today.  Never again.  On the bright side, I found a little video on YouTube about how cockroaches groom themselves.  I'll spare you the visual, but when I saw it lifting its leg like a puppy to paw at its feelers, I actually went "Awww".  Yikes.

Hanwei snapped some photos of me taking a casual nap on the floor with Chip.  He's not the kind of dog who enjoys cuddling up in general but sometimes, when he's tired, he likes company.

I spent last night chilling with this little guy while his parents took a much needed break and caught themselves a movie.  My friends haven't been out together since their kid was born and I thought it would be nice babysitting practise for me since I have lots of other friends who are likely to procreate soon.

I've never looked after such a young baby before, but Little T was a breeze.  He stared at me in puzzlement for the first two hours but I eventually discovered that if I tickled him behind the knee and told him emphatically to "kick! kick! kick! kick!" he went crazy giggling.  We played in the baby gym, read two books on bath time and took several tours of the house as he sucked on my shirt on my shoulder.  I think I'm in love.

And finally, my first What's in My Purse on this blog.  I love looking at pictures of what people carry about on their daily business because they're both visually appealing and revealing.  I especially love all the cute stationery women carry in their bags and looking at what people read when they're out and about.  In my bag this weekend (From L to R):

1)  iPhone 4

2)  Coin purse with band aids and hairpins 

3)  A stack of flash cards that I've been using for work

4)  Rilakkuma stickers that we hand out for good assignments

5)  Red toiletries case

6)  Lavender wet wipes, because I spill like crazy

7)  Spotted Tesco mini umbrella

8)  iPod with fluorescent orange earphones that match my...

9)  Fluorescent orange rubber pouch that contains extra earphones and pens

10)  My wallet, a special gift from a friend a long time ago

11)  A packet of tissues

12)  A one-use poncho leftover from the National Day Parade.  Just in case

13)  Extra sugar free gum

14)  My very exciting Totoro keychain with a Starbucks thumbdrive I got for putting a top up on my card

The bright yellow bag is from Nine West, a present from my mom several months ago when she saw it and told me she thought she had to buy it because I love to wear yellow.  

So it's back to work now, Sunday blues and finishing up marking and reading about hydraulic fracturing.  It promises to be a long week ahead, but I just keep marking writing milestones and making gratitude lists in my head and one day, I'll be there.

I lied a little

So it took me a while and the juices weren't exactly flowing smoothly, but I got there.  In the night of a beautiful day where the light had faded and nothing felt quite so beautiful anymore, I wrote through a little despondency and feeling lost and reached my target anyway.  It doesn't feel particularly celebratory or exciting, but it's good to have the words and I know from experience that when I look back on them and read them after sleeping on them for awhile, I'll be more appreciative than I am now and I thought that it was probably wise to document the moment.  

Even in moments of feeling down, I think it's important to recognise all the good, easy, happy things.  Here are a couple of other things I fully appreciated about today:

The bizarre and somewhat dramatic silhouette created by my high-low skirt from Cotton On, a cheap Pull and Bear tee and my fleece poncho.  On my feet - Swedish Hasbeens for H&M clogs.  Part leather, part wood and all comfortable goodness.

Something one of the 15 year old boys drew on the board for me today.  These kids sometimes make me so happy. 

Nanowrimo, Day 15

Just a quick one before I rush out the door for the day - today is the midpoint of Nanowrimo.  As of last night, I had 23,000something words and if all goes according to plan tonight, I should have something in the region of 25,000 before bed.  

Wow.  The halfway mark.  I never imagined successfully getting there.  I thought I would struggle with work and then give up in haste, but I guess things are working out better than I imagined so far.

In the meantime, here are a couple of snaps of my best buddy and one of my favourite pairs of PJs.  The sad, short pencil totally cracks me up.

 
Sometimes, I playfully strangle Chip because he lets me.  He sits there gently blinking with trust as I wrap my hand around his throat and gently throttle him.  It really makes me laugh.  It says so much about our relationship that such an alpha dog allows me to grab him by the neck or even bite him.

Then again, my father says that every day, the moment I come home and Chip smells me (he can't see), he starts barking madly.  No matter whether I run upstairs to put my bag down and change my clothes or whether I cuddle him before having a quick shower, he barks his head off until I have spent a sufficient amount of time reassuring him that I am present for good.

My father said that it really annoyed him and that he didn't know why the blasted dog had to go so crazy from just catching a whiff of me every night.

I told him.  That's love.

Love songs in age

I've spent part of the evening so far doing lazy colouring in front of The West Wing with my family.  I bought a bunch of Taro Gomi books several years ago, and I finally cracked open the Squiggles one and took my Derwent pencils for a walk.  The texture of the paper is actually much nicer and easier to work with in this one.

Before that, in the afternoon, I finally got round to tidying up my jewellery drawer and opening a box of my things that my mother had put away when I left for the United Kingdom two years ago. For some reason, when I left, my parents decided that the only logical thing to do with my room was to empty all my cupboards and put my things away into storage.  I was horrified to come home and find even my underwear drawer empty.

It took me awhile to get down to this not because I was feeling lazy, but because I knew that there were lots of things in there that would bring back memories, and I guess I was nervous about feeling nostalgic.  I cracked it in the end anyway and found lots of things that made me smile and made me sad.  But, I thought the time had come. 

An incredibly painted wallet - a present from an ex, a beautiful bone box that I bought when I was in India and a ribbon belt that I used to wear.

A very cool ring from the Metropolitan Museum of Art shop.  My mother gave it to me some time ago but its just a little tight for some fingers and a little loose for others, so I may let her start wearing it again.

This one made me smile a lot.  I was the biggest tomboy growing up and when I did well on an exam and my parents asked me what I wanted, I begged for the fattest Swiss Army knife that money could buy.  I was so proud of this that I carried it in my pocket to school every day, never mind the weight, and spent recesses showing off the edge on the saw.  The parts are a little rusty, but it looks like it would still work just fine.

I used to carry this on planes in my backpack when I travelled.  Can you imagine?  This is how terrorism has changed the world.

Some special jewellery.  One of the nicest pairs of earrings anyone has ever bought me from an ex-boyfriend (they look JUST like chandeliers and glitter like anything).  He carried them home from Bangkok in his pocket to stop them from being crushed, and I was really touched.

The slipper from Cinderella, the musical, which my mom and I watched together.  In a soft-hearted moment, she bought it for me and it came with this cute little box which I use for storing rings.

And a tiny enamelled Perllini star pendant.  Priya, if you're reading this, do you remember it?  As undergraduate students, we were coerced into organising a big dinner and dance for some faculty staff and it was an annoying process for which we weren't given any credit while some of the staff members spent the evening in a proverbial circle jerk.  Even though we chose the theme, booked the band and the gifts, organised the itinerary and emcees and ran the programme, we were ultimately little students behind the scenes and no one hesitated to treat us that way.

When everyone had left and the banquet hall was being cleared, the team leader presented us with the star pendants and a motivational speech.  Every time I look at mine, I want to laugh ironically.

More special items - beaded jewellery my mother made when she was young, a silver shell necklace from Mel and pendants from my family.  When my brothers were little, they loved getting me tiny Perllini pendants for birthdays and I cherished them all.  Gotta love the hanging monkey and the elephant.

The rose necklace belongs to my mom and as I child I loved its vintage look.

Special cufflinks my father bought in the 70s from Mohenjo-Daro.  My father is a very impulsive man and goes through periods of his life where he throws things away, only to long for them afterwards.  In our house, the best present is sometimes one he thought he lost.  Many years ago I saved these from the rubbish heap and they moved with us from house to house.  Just last week, he started talking about the archaeological site and he mentioned these cufflinks and wondered where they were.  I found them today.

Once, long ago, I almost gave them away to someone who I knew would love them, but the look on my father's face when I presented them made me glad that I hadn't.

A Lion King pendant from my mother back from when the movie first came out.

I also did some organising, including washing out some old body butter containers and cutting my ear studs into strips for storage inside.  I love the cupcakes and aliens!

All in, it was a very strange and slightly sad afternoon.  On the one hand, I have a much neater jewellery drawer now.  On the other, I stumbled across many things I would rather not have touched.

There was a whole bag of things in the box that I had kept from an old love of mine - letters, mementos, little statuettes, things we had bought for each other, beautiful pieces of coral from a beach holiday.  I once had them all on some shelves by my bed - a shrine to us that I saw first thing when I woke up in the morning, last thing when I lay down to sleep.  That relationship - abusive and obssessive - lasted nearly five years.  I threw the whole bag away.

Sometimes I think there is no use in being sentimental.  I like looking at things from my parents because I know they will always feel the same way about me.  But is there any good in coming across artifacts of shattered hopes and lost dreams? 

I don't know.  But I'm glad I'm done with that box now.  One less thing skulking under my bed, waiting for me.  There are still some other boxes and drawers to deal with.  I don't have the heart right now.  One day though, when I'm able to look back on this and laugh, I'll sit down by myself and do the same thing that I did today.

As the rain fell outside and the house slumbered through a grey afternoon, I discarded things from people who had once loved me.

Bits and bobs

Here's my pal that I was telling you about, chilling on my balcony with his broken leg, easy as anything.  He's stopped flying off whenever he hears the sound of my camera.  I'm half-tempted to start throwing breadcrusts at him and recreate a bird version of Free Willy where he eventually leaps gracefully over my outstretched fist.

My good friend (and faithful reader!) Kim and I decided to meet for coffee on the weekend.  I wanted to thank her for being such a good friend to me over the nasty break up period and bought her a small perfume from Victoria's Secret.  To my surprise and delight, she'd had the same idea and bought me a gift as well - this beautiful Murakami book with a lovely inscription. 

Thank you so much Kim (because I know you'll probably be reading this), I savour a few pages before bed every night!  It's just the right mix of strange, whimsical and slightly eerie.

My Paul McCartney dog tag from his US tour in 2005 against a new mesh sweater of sorts from New Look.  When I bought this at the concert all those years ago for $15, my friends laughed at me and said that I'd been ripped off - it was JUST a dog tag.  I thought that concert jewellery was unusual and special and wore it with pride anyway.  Well, it's held up really well over seven years where a $35 shirt would have been faded to pieces in the wash! 

And I'm enjoying burning my Yankee Candles in the dark - this one smells of tea and spices - and watching the dancing glow of my yellow ceramic lid and coaster.

Work has also been fulfilling - we're teaching students about American politics for a special event in January and while I'm the last person in the world to be talking about politics, catching up has been a great education for me.

To be honest, I can be a little apathetic in this domain.  When we introduced ourselves as trainers, we were supposed to say why we had been chosen to teach for the event.  I faltered, then, pointed at my colleague and, "Because Ms. S made me!" 

Today, I listened to my colleagues teach about theories of government and about all kinds of political positions in the US and I realised just how much I had missed out on in school when I was wide-eyed, dreamed of storybooks and had very little time for the plod through History and Economics.

I wish now that I'd paid more attention, or cared enough to try.

But hey, sometimes you get a second chance, and I'm glad that rather than being stuck behind a desk, I work in a place that allows me to continue to learn and feel wonder at all the things that the world was, is and can be. 

Well, it's Day 12 of Nanowrimo, and the faster I start, the earlier I'll end!

It's easy

When I saw a poster advertising the Bootleg Beatles coming to Singapore, the first person I thought of was David.  He's the biggest Beatles fan I know in Singapore, so I asked him if he'd like to go as well.  My friends Wei Jing and Leong also wanted to go, so we bought tickets for relatively good seats.

I saw Paul McCartney live about seven years ago.  It was one of the most special concert experiences  I've ever had (I may or may not have violently kissed the kind friend who bought me the ticket afterwards), but Paul is not my favourite Beatle and he couldn't sing certain songs.

On the other hand, I'm not big on Beatles tribute bands.  I've never seen one in my life.  But for some reason, the little "and orchestra" tagline got me. I kept picturing the sweeping violins of Eleanor Rigby and the wild trumpet solos in Penny Lane.  And I thought: if there is going to be one good way to listen to the Fab Four for an evening, surely this must be it.

For a change, I wore a frilly dress, heels and a pendant my mother made for me.  The heels (New Look) are about three inches high but surprisingly comfortable - I danced at least half the night!

Apart from some slight traffic and timing snafus, the concert was WONDERFUL.  First of all:

I know, right?  That's not the actual Beatles.  I just made that photo black and white for comparison and had to do a double take.  Obviously they didn't look completely alike.  "Paul" was a little too chinny and "George" didn't have quite the same bone structure.  "Ringo" sounded nothing like the real Mr Parkin, but he was an amazing drummer.  The resemblance was close enough that I could watch them for two hours and not feel like it was a fraud.

They had all the mannerisms down, right to Paul's cheesy head shaking and John's wide-legged stance, and I spent the whole night doing what I would have done anyway - staring at "John".  That they spoke in Liverpudlian accents and did the same types of riffs and jokes ("Let's see your hands above your heads!" "Paul" shouted, to which "John" replied, "Now let's see yer feet above yer 'eads!") made it feel even more authentic.

And the music.  Oh, the music.

They went through their Rock and Roll period (my favourite type of music) and ended with Twist and Shout and just the right amount of "linen tearing" in their voices.  Then, they moved on to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour.  Gotta love the costumes!

Obviously there was no way they could play all the Beatles hits in one evening, let alone touch every album, so they skipped Revolver and Rubber Soul, but thankfully, Abbey Road was kept in the mix.  (It's my favourite album and each time I listen to it, my mind is blown a different way).

The orchestra was brilliant.  If you've never heard All You Need Is Love with the live opening of La Marseillaise, please do.  Also, listening to I Am The Walrus in person was not something I ever imagined I would get the chance to do.

(Look at "John"!  He's a dead ringer.)  The acoustic version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps was lovely, and Wei Jing and I were pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Don't Let Me Down.  There were so many songs I would loved to have heard (Revolution 9, David quipped), but with a catalogue of something like 600 numbers it was inevitable that many got left out.  Anyway, we still got to "Na-na-na" our asses off to Hey Jude and I sang till my throat was raw.

Right at the end, on the fast songs, the string quartet actually got up and starting dancing with their instruments, which was both refreshing and funny.  I saw the trumpet player jitterbugging with the violinist.  We did our fair shair of dancing, and as nights go, it was warm, fun, happy and filled with lots of Beatlesque love.

Two other things that cheered me up yesterday:

I love fluid looking sculptures like this one at Promenade station.

And two drenched mynahs, friends of my house, sat on the air-conditioning unit outside my room while waiting for the torrential rain to stop.  The one on the left has a bad leg and he often chills out on my balcony or outside my room since I don't have the heart to chase him away. 

This picture cracks me up especially because at that very moment, I was writing a bit in Nanowrimo where two mynahs - you guessed it - sit on someone's window sill to ride out a storm.  The universe works in mysterious ways.

Waiting for morning

I'm starting to write this at 1:30am.  I've just finished Nanowrimo Day 8.  It's incredibly gruelling for someone on a full-time work schedule, but I've been keep to it so far.  I remember someone telling me that you need to do something 21 times before it becomes habit.  Maybe this means that by the end of the month, I'll be in the habit of writing 1,600 words a day! 

After I hit publish on this, I'll crawl into bed.  It'll probably be two.  I'll put on a soothing YouTube video and if I'm lucky, I'll be out by two-thirty.  

I'm not usually lucky.

I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember.  I hate it.  It makes me cagey, out of control, and deathly sleepy in exactly the wrong places.

It manifests every time I'm stressed because I have the kind of mind that chases itself in circles.  I was an obnoxious child with very few friends and by the time I became a teenager, I was beating myself up over every little faux pas.  This is embarrassing to admit.  I was a massive Backstreet Boys fan (that's not the embarrassing bit) and I was crazy about Kevin, the oldest member.  When they announced on the radio that he was getting married, I didn't sleep the whole night.

I can pretty much recognise now what the triggers are.  Feeling bad about something that happened that day.  Loss.  Anger.  Pain.  Fear.  Stress and anticipation.  I couldn't sleep for days when my grandmother died. 

And of course, when we broke up and I lost that safe anchor, my sleeping patterns began to drift as well.  

Oddly enough, the exhaustion that comes with Nanowrimo hasn't exactly helped.  My current schedule is that I wake up each morning at about nine.  On late days, work (I'm a teacher) finishes around nine thirty at night.  I come home by half ten and decompress, sometimes for up to an hour.  Once I'm showered and calm, I start on leftover work and eventually work my way up to Nano.  Sometimes, sleep only hits at 3am.  It's a ridiculous schedule, and I have eyebags on top of eyebags, but I don't know how else to do it.  

I haven't found a cure-all for insomnia.  I listen to relaxation and meditation on YouTube.  Sometimes that works.  Sometimes I stay up and watch Bob Ross paint, or listen to Mister Rogers talk about being friends.  Sometimes, I try for complete darkness and silence.  Invariably, one night out of two, I'm still wired.  Now and again, I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to bed for an hour.  People get texts from me at six in the morning. 

So, I have no advice for you.

Mainly, I've just found that when the problem evaporates, sleep returns.  This breakup will take a long time to sublime.  He was a great, steadying force for me.  Knowing that he had my back in the waking world, I plunged into the sleeping one with ease.  I hate myself for getting so used to it.  For peeling my armour off and telling myself that just this once, I could have something to rely on.  But maybe I'm just human. 

So I continue to struggle and plough.  And at times, friends stay up with me.  They write, or text or sometimes, if they happen to have the next day off and planned to sleep late anyway, they carry on conversations.  Not many know of my trouble.  Some think I'm just energetic.  But it can help to know that in the big, dark night, you are not alone.  

Insomnia is fear itself.  It is painful and prickly and can turn you inside out with anxiety.  It is repeating things that happened over and over in your mind until your eyes sting with tears and you are less sane and more awake than ever.  

Yet, knowing that somewhere someone might be awake too can collapse uncontrollable insomnia into the tedious, but much less threatening, task of waiting for morning. 

Writing gratitude lists in my head can also turn looming dread into a chance to be thankful.  Here are a few things that I was grateful for today.

Victoria's Secret bath and body products.  I splurge on expensive skincare because nothing belittles nightmares like waking up and smelling something freshly, heavily luxurious.

Beautiful costume jewellery earrings that my mother bought me when she was on work in the United States.

The enormous Salad Stop! salad that I quaffed today.  Chock full of orange segments, pomelo, olives, lettuce, cucumber, corn, grapes, carrots, edamame and drizzled with a nicely subtle Japanese miso dressing.

The view from my office window.  Nothing beats watching a heavy storm descend when you are warm and dry inside.