Sky News was great fun, all two and a half minutes of it; I had my name on the screen! They pronounced it right without asking! I looked that uniform shade of beige everyone on TV news looks because it turns out they spray the make up on! w00t!
I decided to spend the day looking for ways and reasons to be cheerful. JB and I have lurched from one emotional heart to heart to another; this was partly, I think, prompted by having a small spat over something. But mostly I suspect it was as a result of me spending a lot of time talking about guilt, CBT and depression and other cheerful things with a friend and colleague which just made me want to make sure there's no part of me, good or bad, that JB doesn't know about. It is relieving and important, but draining.
There has also been some negotiation with my parents over numbers for the wedding as they keep pulling relatives out of the closet. I want to keep it fair and offer JB's mum as many guests as my parents have, but it's really hard to pull off the balancing act. It's my friends I keep pulling out to accommodate everyone else! JB has an awful lot of friends whose weddings he's been to and feels obliged to invite even though they're barely in touch. It's frustrating, especially considering we're still not formally engaged, although he tells me he has some half-formed ideas for how to 'surprise' me. Daft romantic, beloved stoat.
Anyway, to paraphrase Ian Dury, here are three reasons to be cheerful.
1) Allison Janney and friends on what a feminist looks like (JB and I both tempted to make "this is what a weasel looks like" video:
3) Travel sweets. I found some in Marks & Spencer and gorged until I was sick. Those wondrous oh-so-English boxes of boiled sweets immersed in talcum powder-like icing sugar that scream long car journeys as a child.
Oh, and a colleague I'd been having on-off difficulties with has opened up a bit and I feel like we've been able to chat congenially for the first time since January. Phew!
Well, I've certainly eaten enough chocolate to pretend this is my Easter. Once again I've restarted the "diet" - it's more of an attempt to bring my comfort-binge-eating tendencies under control and do more exercise - and it's all going well. Actually, the exercise has been going well since January, not to tempt fate...
The four day break has been great; we shopped (JB got me underwear for my birthday present and I spent vouchers and freebie points for other things), we slept, we ate lots, we frolicked with my downright adorable nephew who charmingly gave everyone kisses and duddles (cuddles) and we bought a Wii. I fear my right elbow is now doomed to a lifetime of RSI, but I have soundly beaten JB at Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis, so that's okay.
Naturally, the nickname for the console is the Wiieasel.
The whole "weasel" thing started as a song lyric.
"This is my country / and these are my reasons" - Fergus Sings The Blues, Deacon Blue
JB pointed out that reasons sounded like 'weasels' and so it stuck. Now we are weasels, stoats, otters (holding hands, of course), ermine, ferrets... You name it, we're Mustelidae. I've even written and published a book for JB on Blurb about "stoatly living". Because, in our universe, stoats steal pants. Knickers pants, not trousers pants. Ferrets dance, otters and romantic, weasels are spies that are everywhere and polecats and pine marten know all the best places to pootle.
How can you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel? Weasels are weaselly recognised and stoats are stoatally different.
I'm sure that makes perfect sense to you all, right? One day I might even explain the A & JB alternative definition for the Hebrew word "tov".
Just a quick heads up on every forum I can think of to spread the word. Hopefully you've heard about this already, but if not, here's what Match It For Pratchett is all about:
- Terry Pratchett, amazingly prolific and creative author of an epic fantasy series set on the Discworld, was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.
- Upon discovering that the funding for Alzheimer's research is just 3% of the funding available for cancer studies, he donated $1m (£500,000) to furthering the cause.
- Devoted fans and sufferers of Alzheimers, carers and others who are moved by the plight of so many who have to live through the frustration, pain and devastation it causes are joining together to attempt to match his donation.
Even a little tiny bit helps, so if it's a cause that speaks to you, why not join in?
I think it's all going to get a bit heavy around here...
I was reading back through Patrica Volonakis Davis's blog and found the brilliant post entitled I Am Ann Coulter, in which she makes the clear point that calling yourself a Christian and acting like one have to go hand in hand if you're going to be anything like a genuine Christian.
That troubles me, but in a good way. For one, it's true, and for another it underpins the resolution I made for myself at the beginning of this year. Unfortunately, I've failed to meet it every single day.
I've come to the conclusion that once one gets one's head around the concept of forgiveness, one is a good Christian. Sadly, it's the most difficult thing to practice. Every single day I wake up and vow that today I'm not going to get angry at petty slights but save my righteous indignation for cruelty, ignorance and disrespect. Every single day I get up and promise that no matter what anyone says, does or believes, I'm going to not only treat them with peaceful calm, but train myself to actually respond with it.
It's a basic, unmistakeable tenet straight out of the Gospels that in order to attain forgiveness, one has to embrace it. I cannot love the people around me as truly as I wish until I can undo all bitterness and bitchiness from my mind and words.
Like I said, I fail constantly. Today and yesterday I had pretty uncharitable thoughts about someone who randomly seemed to stop talking to me a while ago and has since treated me with the bare bones of professional respect; I am now sitting here trying to compose a list of all the reasons why I should remember that her behaviour doesn't matter, all the ways in which my own falls short of the ideals and standards I hold up for others and all the good features she still has.
My friend D once told me that the best thing about me was that I saw good in other people and told them about it. I hope that I do this, but to me that's only half the battle towards being a good person and a good Christian. The other half is first seeing the good, making sure no compliment is backhanded, losing my instinctively critical nature and doing all this without trying.
Being a cynic is fun. Being sarcastic can be hilarious. Being streetwise is no bad thing.
I don't expect to become a saint; I'd just like to know I'm spreading more good than harm.
Disclaimers:
No MacBook Airs were hurt during the making of this video. Also, I'm a huge Apple fangirl, but I have a sense of humour.
I don't know what irritates me more about this article; that the Greek Orthodox Church is getting involved in politics which have to be secular - because they affect non-religious people, whether you think that's right or wrong - or the really lazy piece of BBC journalism that led to this statement:
The government proposes to give common-law couples the same rights as those who have gone through legal or religious ceremonies.
It wants to harmonise Greek law to European standards.
European standards? What the fuck are they? Plus, the writers of this article do know that European society is based on a (secular) Greek model? Oh, and by the way, if you didn't know it already, BBC journalist, COMMON LAW MARRIAGE DOES NOT EXIST IN THE UK. It never has. Oh, and by the way, unless you also sign a register, religious ceremonies don't count as married under the law and that's the case in more than one country (just ask Eddie Murphy and his new "wife").
As cohabitees in the UK, you have no legal rights unless you create them by contract. Marriage protects you; cohabiting doesn't. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and I'd welcome couples who have no traditional, familial or religious imperative to marry getting the same rights as those who have conducted civil ceremonies. That's why I totally supported the creation of civil partnerships.
The Greek Orthodox Church has to come in for its own criticism about this. They consider cohabitation as prostitution - I have no problem with that. I don't agree, but that's between me and my understanding of my religion, and I'd be interested in talking to theologians on this issue. I just get frustrated when church and state collide; my personal ethics cannot govern an atheist, a Jew, a Sikh, a Ba'hai... you get the picture.
The central code of legal "morality" has to be based on something universal. It might be universal and a common religious principle, and that's great (for me!) but how can we have a hope in hell for an ecumenical future if a particular denomination - albeit the most common one in the country - keeps interfering?
The Rabbi's Daughter, Reva Mann's autobiography, is about to be released on paperback. My pre-order is in!
Truth be told, I'm already suspecting I won't like the author. Judging by this promotional interview in The Telegraph, her impulsive, addictive behaviour has little to do with anything Jewish and more to do with being confused or possibly selfish as a result of a bizarre upbringing. The fact that she had a religious upbringing is always a peg for people with some misguided anti-religious agenda to hang their prejudices on. See, they say, religious upbringings turn you into a nut!
This is insulting for two reasons. One, don't blame religions for the failures of people, if you believe they have failed. Two, you're assuming that her sexual promiscuousness - apparently a reaction to self-imposed ultra-religious strictures - is, in and of itself, a bad thing.
This leads me on to one of my personal bugbears. Personally I don't think impulsive sexual behaviour is necessarily very sensible in a time of great awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, but what I find people doing is firing a double-whammy of saying it's immoral whilst at the same time rejecting any code of religious ethics (which is far more likely to damn sexual permissiveness than secular ethics).
I'm not saying you can't pick and choose religiously - we all do. I'm just frustrated with the idea that the modern ideal is to condemn all religion whilst secretly thinking that the most restrictive rules might be okay when it comes to women. The heady combination of a blame-free society with dark ages misogyny is quite something, isn't it?
There are some religious ideas I reject, and I have to work through my own attitudes to that; for example, cultures that perform female circumcision disgust me, but for hygeine reasons I accept that male circumcision is fine. If there's a hypocrisy there, I should investigate it (and sometimes I think there is).
Women behaving with sexual freedom long enjoyed by men is no problem for me, although I believe that a lot of emotional, physical and sexual problems would be avoided if both genders showed some more respect to the act and its consequences, intended and unintended. It just drives me mad when women are condemned as sluts by the same people who deride religious beliefs. Which is not, by any means, all the people who are crass and misogynist, just a particularly loathsome subsection.
I shall try and withhold judgement on Reva Mann and look forward to reading her book.
So, I finally got back to the gym after a week off due to being alternately ill and busy. JB and I left around 7:30, and headed out across the grassy common towards home. We were approached by a girl carrying a blue plastic bag and the exchange went like this.
Girl: Wanna buy some meat?
JB: Sorry?
Girl: Do you want to buy some meat? I've got about 30 quid's worth; you can have it for a tenner.
JB: Er, no thanks...
It says an awful lot about my home life with JB that my sole addition to this conversation was "Sorry, we're kosher."
JB got his colouring pencils out! I totally love it; I had envisaged a different kind of design, suggesting a vector illustration with block blue colours and just an octopus, but as usual my beloved boy takes my ideas, improves on them and delivers something I didn't know I wanted but absolutely adore.
There is a version with slightly less muted blues but it clashed with the Vox default colour. In time, there might be tweaking and alterations but really I just love this the way it is.
Thank you, my weasel; I love you.
