Fail

Ok. So five months after posting on how to make myself a better person, I am still not a better person.

Let me break it down to you guys.

I still smoke.

I still drink too much.

I haven't posted on my blog since February.

I still sit on my fat arse all day, although I did waste good money on new running clothes - ha!

I don't eat my five a day.

I haven't sewn anything.

I haven't learnt to cook a new dish every week - although I did make paella for the first time - which was pretty awesome.

The only things I have been doing are, teaching myself latin (yeah - useful), read up on some study of religions and gender texts, and working as a HR admin lady for one of the biggest, evilest banks of the UK.

My life at the moment consists of sitting on my larger than average behind, spending all day working out if people are lying to me (I have to check out applicants records - they're nearly always lying about something), and then going home or to my boyfriends, where I'm cooked for (not by him), and then play Viva Pinata or watch TV, while drinking steadily and smoking profusely.

Good times.

I was reading the sassy curmudgeon again today - damn that girl is funny.

Maybe I should go for a humourous rather than whiny blog?

Pah, no one reads it anyway.

Peace out A town.

Moomin Madness

Only time for a quick one today, a Pancake Party awaits me.

Thought it'd make sense to take a little time to explain the title of my blog.

When I was little my mum and dad used to read to my little sister and I before we went to sleep, as all good parents do. In particular they used to read stories they themselves had loved as a child.One of my father's favourites was (and still is), The Moomins series by Tove Jansson. Some of you may remember this being a cartoon show on T.V., but trust me, there is no way the cartoon conveyed the darkness and surrealism of the books adequately.
Now one of my favourite bloggers Mr. London Street has already written very eloquently describing the affect reading these books can have on a small child, and I don't think I could do better, so check it out.
Two of the female characters in the book always caught my attention. Ignoring Snorkmaiden with her whining and her obsession with mirrors, never mind the fact that she always got scared and had to have Moomintroll hold her hand, I looked elsewhere for inspiration.
Moominmama, although a lovely motherly figure, didn't quite capture my imagination at eight years old.The Groke? My word, if I'd have identified with the Groke at eight years old, well, I'd be a lot messed up than I am.

So that left two people.

Little My was always my little sister's avatar in Scandinavian children's fiction. Small, feisty and fearless, she was one of the boys and was slightly morally ambiguous. She was, by definition, a naughty little girl, but everyone loved her nonetheless. I always envied Little My's ability to have fun, get into trouble and then promptly worm her way out of it.


Mymble, or The Mymble's Daughter, as she is referred to in the earlier books, is Little My's sister. The older Mymble seems to be an obscure matriarch who has given birth to Little My, the Mymble's Daughter and Snufkin, and probably others. She doesn't become a central figure until Moominvalley in November, in which she is depicted washing and brushing her long, reddish golden hair and generally expressing her happiness at living an independent and carefree existence. She has very long legs and wears red wellington boots.
I think I have subconsciously tried to take the best out of both of these characters whilst I've grown up. Like Little My, I try to enjoy having fun and live for the day, but I was never quite a full tom-boy, as I have a dislike of the cold and damp. The Mymble's Daughter had the right idea, staying warm and dry and brushing her hair, and not much caring about what anyone else was doing, and living to please herself. She did always seem a slightly isolated figure however, so I've tried to incorporate Little My's ability to make friends.

Anyhow, pancakes await!

Top Ten Things to Do to Make Myself More Perfect

So I can't think of anything particularly funny or insightful to write about, on account of having had some of the friggin' weirdest few days I've had for a while... more on that story later.

I haven't dreamt anything exciting, or even left the house other than to go to the shops for several days...

So without further ado, I present to you (and myself) my:

Top Ten Things to Do to Make Myself More Perfect (more perfect? Surely that implies I'm some-perfect already...huh...)

1. Get off my fat arse and start running. Or at least jogging. Or stumbling. Something that doesn't involve watching Jeremy Kyle.

2. Eat at least my 5 a day. I feel a need to up my vitamin levels having returned from Australia where I survived on a diet of ice creams and peanut butter (sometimes even peanut butter ice cream)

3. Get a Job! This is a high-level priority - I have £50 in the whole world. Bad times.

4. Get back into my subject. If I'm doing a Masters this September at one of the country's finest academic institutions, surely I should begin refilling my brain with something other than Take A Break?

5. Reconnect with my friends. They've got shit going on too y'know! It ain't just all about me.

6. Learn to cook at least one new dish every week. While I'm back living with Ma I should take advantage of her sage wisdom while I can.

7. Learn to sew my own clothes. Ditto above - I've mastered basic knitting, next comes seamstressing.

8. Monitor my booze and nicotine intake. It should be minimal, to help me financially, mentally and physically.

9. Make an effort to begin to really try to learn a language. French; fail. Spanish; fail. Hindi; fail. Greek; fail. Tamil; fail. Sort it out. Just pick one, and follow it through!

10. Keep up this blog, whether anyone reads it or not. As my boyfriend is forever telling me, I have no hobbies or creative interests (isn't he a dear?). This can be one of my new creative hobbies.

So there we go. Can we do it? Let's fucking hope so.

In order to keep resolution 10 attainable, I propose to share with you knowledge gained through the attempts to keep resolutions 1 through 9.

So tune in for athletic, nutritional, financially-sound, academic, social, culinary, crafty, healthy, bi-lingual advice! Or at least stories of athletic, nutritional, financially-sound, academic, social, culinary, crafty, healthy, bi-lingual failure.

Sex dreams about Jim Robinson from Neighbours do not help my pursuit of perfection

Yeah you read that right. Jim Robinson from Neighbours was in my dreams last night...in a sexy way.

Let me set the scene...

Myself and my sister (please see Figure 1), were running around a Jurassic landscape, probably somewhere in Indonesia. There were strange mounds not unlike the one found at Mycenae. We sat down for a picnic in one of them and then, finding that I for some reason had crab paste sandwiches (err..gross!), threw it out of the burial mound opening. No sooner had I done this when...

Figure 1

Dum dum DUMMM!! A Tyrannosaurus Rex (Figure 2) came charging up, and snuffled at the door. Shit your pants that was scary! We distracted him with another sandwich and made a break for it...

Figure 2

Now it all gets bit fuzzy. I went from running around in the jungle to suddenly being dressed in a luxe bath robe in some sort of fur-tent-palace.

There is champagne and oysters, and several four poster beds in one room. "Niiiccee", I think to myself, paying no attention to the fact my sister has disappeared and therefore has probably been eaten by that dinosaur.

Then surreptitiously, who else but JIM ROBINSON (Actor Alan Dale, Figure 3) comes through the door (tents have doors). He is wearing only some kind of towel-cum-loincloth. He takes my hand and leads me to the bed. I am, at this point, more than a little grossed out.

Figure 3

But I suck it up (metaphorically speaking), and do as I am obviously expected to. I realise that this is a chore I must perform in order to gain material boons like Marc Jacobs handbags (I don't even like Marc Jacobs handbags, this dream gets weirder and weirder).

At this point I realise it's not Jim Robinson, but definately Caleb from The O.C., he has that air of thinking you are an annoying interpuption to his making money.
Then I realise who I have become! I am Julie Cooper-Nichol (Figure 4)!

Figure 4

Then I wake up...

Now, I for one am unsure of this dreams deep unconscious meaning, but would be glad of any help towards an answer.
Sure, Julie Cooper-Nichol was always my favourite OC character, but I didn't think that extended to a wish to physically be her, and experience her cold, meaningless and frankly disgusting life.

Maybe it's cautioning me about materialism? Maybe it does aid my pursuit of perfection?
Anyway it's grossed me out so much I can't bare the thought of compiling my list of perfections to obtain today.

What the hell happened to my sister anyway?

Introduction

Why don't we all just go around the room and say a few words about ourselves? Would you like to start Georgia?

I hate these moments more than anything, attempting to convey your entire personality, life so far and ambitions for the future to a room full of strangers in a very short space of time. I always end up saying something like "Hi, my name's Georgia, and I like er... music, but I hate er... Robert Mugabe". Something that conveys nothing about me other than the fact that I am fairly inept in social situations.

Luckily, I have all day to compose this post and chances are no one will read it anyway, so hopefully I can get it right.

Hi there, my name's Georgia and I'm twenty two years old. I used to live in a trendy (i.e. scruffy, dangerous and overpriced) corner of London, while studying Religion at a trendy (i.e. scruffy, dangerous and overpriced) University of London School, and working for a mid-range cosmetics and skincare brand on a posh high street in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. After a graduating, and a slight midlife-crisis on the part of my twenty two year old boyfriend, all this was jacked in while he gallivanted off to Australia to find himself. I decided to jet off to revisit India, for six months of volunteer work, language learning and research into the impact of faith-based NGOs on rural South Indian women.
Epic Fail.

I lasted less than 30 days. Queue panic attacks, incoherent sobbing and histrionic phone calls to parents/boyfriend. It got to the point where fourteen year old HIV positive orphans were comforting me. If that's not pathetic, I don't know what is.

So I buggered off back home, rejoined my jobless depressive failed artist father on our boat in rural Essex. Oh how nice! A boat! Yes, it's lovely, and has no central heating or running hot water, and all our electricity comes off one plug. We steal pallets from industrial estates to keep warm. It snowed a lot, the pipes froze, the deck was an ice-rink, times were hard.

Fuck this, I thought, and bought a ticket to Perth to rejoin my boyfriend, who by this point, after two months alone with his Grandfather in a bungalow at the back of a petrol station in rural Western Australia, had remembered that I was the light of his life and centre of his universe.
Queue panic attacks, incoherent sobbing and histrionic emails to parents/friends. (There is nothing in Western Australia, nothing. I think my brain was so starved of any form of stimulation it started to hyper analyse every little decision and occurrence to compensate).

The boyfriend decided to take me away to the East Coast, and lo! I was cured! Art galleries! Museums! Bars! All the delights a girl could ask for were on offer. Queue happiness, laughter, ice-cream, with only occasional outbursts of panic attacks and incoherent sobbing, and absolutely no histrionic emails.

Alas! Money ran out, and I have returned to the sunny climbs of Essex. It's bloody snowing again! This time I am living with Mother, in very nice but incredibly small dolls house Victorian terrace. She is nursing a broken heart after her twenty seven year old lover accepted a post in South Africa. It might be worth pointing out I haven't lived with Mother since I was sixteen. This may get interesting.

So here I am, jobless, homeless (or at least home-of-ones-ownless), boyfriendless (he has returned to life next to the petrol station), and relatively friendless (school and college friends understandably have fled to fairer waters over the years).

My plan, is to use this time to attempt to perfect myself.
This, I am sure you will agree, is a pretty doomed to fail plan.

It involves physical, mental and financial perfection, and includes such goals as looking like Katherine Hegel and learning Spanish, and making my friend a patchwork quilt as a wedding present (why I don't know, I've become slightly fixated on quilting for some reason, it strikes me as comforting).

Now I'm still jet lagged, having only arrived from Melbourne at midday Saturday, so I'll finish this blog without a comprehensive list of my goals. I'll work on them tonight.

The goal of this blog is to share my triumphs and failures with the world by way of keeping my sanity, and also to have somewhere to vent spleen, as it will invariably be failures.

If anyone reads this, it'll be a nearly-Shrove Tuesday - miracle, but if you do, if you're out there, feel free to comment. Constructive criticism is welcomes, it helps us grow as individuals. But be careful not to use your real names, or I'll track you down and cut your knees off if you say anything mean.

Adios