Sunday, March 6, 2011

Waiting Expectantly..

We are going to have a baby.  And now that we're going to have a baby, we need a car with a backseat.  Preferably a station wagon with a boot for the dog can sit in, so that she doesn't lick the baby's face as it is held captive in its specially designed and designated seat.  Our parents assure us that we need to buy a house, especially as the one we rent has been deemed not appropriate.  I need new clothes as I pretty much wear the same outfit, outside of work, day in and day out.  I did recently buy 3 new dresses for work as my suits were cutting my swelling body in half (my mother put money into my account for my birthday for that specific purpose) & now I just wear these in rotation; each one for 5 days straight. I almost always feel I need a haircut.  I almost always feel I need some beauty treatment or another. I need to exercise the dog more though I would really like to be able to afford to send her back to daycare so that someone else can do it.  I need to learn how to drive.  I need to learn how to cook or to be motivated to cook.  I need to get out of debt so that we can get a mortgage.  (With our parents' help, of course.)

I am not unhappy.  Far from it.  This baby was planned & we are really looking forward to meeting it in another 6 months or so.  I was not unhappy before that.  But I live in a constant state of not being enough.  Of not having enough.  Of feeling so frumpy.  Of being on hold.  Of waiting for my life to get on track.  Of waiting to not be a financial burden to my husband. I am not standing still or moving backwards but progress is sometimes so slow as to not be discernible to the human eye. At least in this one way, I am indispensable. And quite a number of people are currently quite pleased with me.  For a change.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Yeah, so anyway...

When I first visited the States, I judged American girls quite harshly because so many of them seemed so incredibly simple and shallow.  But after awhile, I realised that most American guys seemed quite uninterested in what came out of my mouth anyway.  Any deviation from the usual mating script was met by a blank stare, followed by an announcement that he was going to get another drink or use the bathroom & then a cloud of dust would appear where he had just been standing.  I came to see why girls might not see the value in developing a part of their anatomy that the opposite sex showed little interest in.

While it did seem to me that the situation was particularly dire Stateside, the differences were probably more attributable to my going there straight from university, to my living in a ski-town, and to American snowboarders being way more like jocks than Kiwi ones tend to be.  And to be fair, I remember finding many conversations with my NZ tertiary-educated peers quite wanting; wondering how people could do so much talking without ever really saying anything at all.

I guess it could all be blamed on youth, alcohol and sexual urges except that explanation just doesn't sit well with me.  I'm not saying I think that none of those factors had any influence.  Just that I find, across the board, a lot of people seem to switch their brain off as soon as they open their mouths; have the most slippery grasp of reason and logic; and are most uncomfortable if you try to challenge or discuss all but the most basic concepts in any detail at all.

And I don't flatter myself at all when it comes to my intelligence.  Once upon a time, I was a very bright kid but ultimately I placed way too much importance in my natural ability & never really applied myself, preferring to see how well I could do with the bare minimum of effort.  Combined with the most feeble memory and retention of actual facts, in particular statistics, I turned out to be quite the underachiever.  While I have not consciously ripped off anyone's ideas for this blog, I'm under no illusion that many, if not all, of the conclusions I have come to, have not been arrived at before.

Which is why it astounds me again and again how easily I am disappointed. How dull and unimaginative people seem happy to be.  How few of the constructs and paradigms, that make up their reality, they are willing to explore.  How content they are to be spoon-fed.  And of the ones happy to challenge, they often seem unable to differentiate between being critical and being cynical; taking the lazy path of refusing to believe in anything at all; casually waving off any suggestion, that something might be worth standing for, with some vague anecdote about how they heard an unsubstantiated rumour that it's all bullshit anyway.