This title of this could also have been “Unedited and Unapproved”.

This isn’t a blog post.  It’s an essay.  Don’t read it if you don’t want to.  I wouldn’t.  It isn’t good.  In fact, don’t read it.  Skip to the next blog entry.  Pictures are better than words.  Who has time to concentrate on words these days, anyway?

I have expensive hair products I don’t use.

I shine my shoes.

Hey, that even rhymed!

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me that a frontal lobotomy, as the saying goes.

People keep asking me why I don’t write a book.  I don’t have a book in me.  There are plenty of things I would like to have in me, but a book isn’t one of them.  Sorry, I don’t mean to be so crude, but “fuck the pain away”, right? (Thank you, Peaches.  The Teaches of Peaches.)  Lost in Translation.  One of my favourite movies.  A  movie that doesn’t go on and on for too long (unlike the beautiful, but never-ending “The Pianist”.)

I think I drive you to drink, she says.

No, he replied.  It’s just that we both like to drink and we encourage each other.

We shouldn’t.  She says.  It’s killing us.

There is a hole in right knee of my jeans.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s just a hole and who cares?   It isn’t the whole hole.  It isn’t even an arsehole.  The only reason I even think about it is that they have been patched twice now this month.  I used the service that is in the Zynga building to patch them this time.  It is much more expensive but I don’t have time to go to the drycleaners.  It took me 2 weeks to pick them up.  I only managed to get them because they called me and told me they needed the clothes out of the cupboard before the Christmas break.  I picked up my newly-patched jeans on Monday.  The other knee ripped on Tuesday.   I need to learn to sew.  I asked my mum to teach me over the Christmas break.

First world problems.  If I had a dog it would have got run over this week.  It’s like a bad country song.  (I stole that last bit from my husband.)

Nobody puts baby in corner, reads my t-shirt today.  It’s baggy so I won’t sweat on the plane. Remember to pack Ambien, I think. I need to pack a jumper.  No, I don’t.  I have one a friend lent me.  It’s all I need.

Pack Cards Against Humanity.  It’s Apple-to-Apples for evil people.  My friends will love it.  My family will not.

I pack a skipping rope.  I won’t use it.  I pack running shoes.  I might run with my brother.  He tries to kill me.  He outruns me as I beg to stop at the pub for a pint.  Last time I was pregnant.  It wasn’t even THIS last lost baby.  We stopped for pregnancy tests on the way home.  He was the first one to know.   I pack a swimming costume, because my sister-in-law asked me to swim with the kids.  Of course, I haven’t actually packed any of these things yet.  They are strewn like lost lovers behind me.  I need to get a move on.  I should hurry.  Why do I rush?

Some of the gifts I have bought are good ones, not are real ones. They are the gifts that were supposed to go with the gifts I didn’t get time to buy.  They will have to do.   (I  got my nieces chocolate coins – LOL – just because they have American denominations.  It will be funny.   I said “the girls will like it, their parents will not.   I told my sister-in-law this and she told them 🙂 .  I can’t wait to see them all.  Can’t wait.)  She says I can stay there, and I can rest and I can write.  Can they be my shelter in the storm?

I pack a pair of knickers. They say “I <Heart> presents” 🙂 .

I don’t take my yoga mat.  It was out to pack, but Kim says there aren’t any classes during the holidays.  WOW, really?  I guess Buntingford, England is not San Francisco.  Toto, we are not in Kansas any more.   Is there yoga in Kansas during the holidays? 😉

I am packing dirty clothes from other opened suitcases.  I can wash them.  I will make this plane if it kills me.  I wore odd socks this week.  It wasn’t a fashion statement.  One was a knee lengh purple one with moustaches on it.  I got it at a Christmas party.  The other was a black ankle sock.  I looked like a special-ed kid.

I don’t always shower.  No time.  I wash my bits in the sink.  It reminds me of Pablo Honey.   Pablo Honey reminds me of Trevor.  I showered today.

I consider taking vitamins. I haven’t eaten.  Will it make me nauseaus? No time to eat.  Am I the last person in the world to discover “Homeland”?  It is incredible.  Claire Danes doesn’t eat.  I am not comparing myself to Claire Danes.  I don’t even know if I spelt her name right.   No time to check.  Must pack.

I’ll put some music on.  That will still the voices.

I have seen the write.  I just stole that from a friend.  I hear “Addicted to Base” in my head. I want to hear it.  I don’t have time to play it.  I play Nouveau Vague instead.  Now pack.  Pack, you moron.

On the album comes on a song “too drunk to fuck”.  LOL.  Now that has to pretty drunk J!

Fuck, I haven’t got my passport out yet.  Do it now, Nina. I need my green card, too.  Now where the hell is that?

It’s okay.  It’s all going to be okay.  Take a deep breath.  In… out…. In… out….  Your green card is in your burgundy leather travel wallet.  It is with your passport.  You won’t need to worry about that soon.  You will be an American citizen.  One more passport to worry about.  (Okay, now I am joking.)  It’s okay Nina.  It’s all going to be okay.  Just stop writing and pack.  Don’t forget to breathe.  Take Trevor’s passport out of the wallet and leave it for him.  He will need that for Baja.

I want to go back and take all of the capitalization out of this piece of writing.  I want the “I”s, in particular to read as small “i”s.  But I won’t.

I don’t have time to dry my hair.  Now there’s a shocker.  There’s a chunk missing anyway.  There is a piece of my heart missing.  It’s okay.  Guns of Brixton is playing.

My clothes are going to be creased.  No time for tissue paper.  No time to pack them “just so”.  I will have to wash them when I get there.  My mum will iron them for me.  She likes things ironed.  I love my mum.

I tuck my grandfather’s watch into the red velvet jewelry roll my mum gave me.  I want to wear it but I already lost a diamond earring this week.  It broke my heart.  It’s just a thing.  Don’t care.  Just try not to care about it.   My San Francisco aerial map necklace is in the velvet roll.  Good.  It will remind me of my home.  I decide I don’t need my “I <heart> SF” one a friend made me.  That would be overkill.

I am taking more books that I could possibly read in half a lifetime.  They are heavy.  Take some out.  I can’t find my makeup.  Did I already pack it?  Hopefully.  It doesn’t matter.  I can always buy some there if I decide I need it.  I’m multitasking again.  Doing everything  badly.  There is a talk on how “smartphones” are making us more stupid at the Academy of Science next year.  I want to go and see it.  I want to go to Sundance.  I have an invitation.  Maybe I will go.   I will go to Tuscon to shoot guns with my brother-in-law.  I will take my shotgun.  Fuck the world.  And hopefully I will do yoga.  And I will continue to love and love and love.

My house looks like a bomb went off in it. I need to put away the mess before I leave.  I need to call and schedule the cleaner. I need to take down the few Christmas decorations I bothered to put up.  It is bad luck to leave them up past 12^th night and I won’t be back before then.  I shouldn’t have put them up.  I wasn’t here anyway.

I pack walnuts.  I put them in a Ziploc. I pack brandy my dad asked for.  It’s heavy.  I hope my suitcase isn’t overweight.  I need to balance the weight between the suitcases.  I realize now what I am doing.  It’s stream of consciousness writing.  Most people don’t like it.  Typically I don’t either – although there was some Virginia Woolfe I liked.  Now I have the title for my blog post.  That’s why you write the title last.  Never first.  I would never use a working title.

I haven’t packed any “nice” clothes.  My mum will forgive me.  I’ll quickly throw in a dress, in case she wants to go somewhere posh.  I have a red blouse for NYE.  I have several jumpers (“sweaters” for you Americans).  And I have the ripped pair of jeans.  Nothing else.  I will buy new jeans with my cousin on New Year’s Day.  I throw in some underwear and some socks.  I don’t know if they are clean or dirty.  It doesn’t matter.  I am done packing.

The house isn’t spotless. I tidy the rest into a pile and I shut the door to it in the office.  I will deal with it when I get back.

This is why you should edit.  Unedited drivel is boring.  Will nothing turn the sound down on life?  (And I stole that, too.)

I want to post this before I leave.  I don’t have time to edit.  I know WordPress will fuck with the smilies and the full stops.  Americans don’t call them full stops.  I think they call them “periods”.  I am not sure.

It’s raining.  It’s raining and it is leaking in the kitchen.  I will put a bowl there. Maybe the plane will be delayed.  Maybe I have more time.  I hope I have an upgrade.  I hope I can sleep.

I am going to buy myself a Mont Blanc.  Maybe I will do it at the airport.  Jesus Christ!  No I won’t.  (I just googled it to make sure I got the spelling of Mont Blanc right because it would be terribly crass to get something like that wrong when you are being so terribly pretentious!  I saw the price of them.  My Parker pen will do just fine.  Kim said my brother will buy me ink.

I have a travel pack.  It has my eyemask and earplugs in it.  I have valium.  I won’t take it.  there’s Airborne in there.  I won’t take that either. I will take an Ambien.  I put on my compression socks.  Yes, I am a nerd but my mum got DVT.  Why risk it?

Fuck – I have an hour.  I am done.  I am early.  Now what shall I do?  Take those vitamins and have some breakfast Nina.  It is 2pm.  You are an idiot 🙂 .

I look like a shitshow.  If you looked up “shitshow” in the dictionary, there would be me. I think my phone has a virus.

I don’t write for the screen.  I don’t hear music and imagine the score.  I write to get it out of me.  Nothing more.

Something tells me I am going to be writing a lot this holiday.  My friend Brian asked me to write him a letter, so I dug out my fountain pen and some good letter paper.  He is subtle and respectful.  He is not asking for anything between us and I have I told him there is no place in my heart for him.   I have a whole host of options of hand-made paper, untidily stuffed in a leather writing binder (of course).  You would expect nothing less of me.  I don’t have the time or energy to mix the colour of ink I want, so it will likely be plain black.

I thought the last poem was a little bit of a bleak way to start the holidays, so I wrote another.  For my friend Brian, that asked me to write to him.

Writing is easy
It is editing yourself that is hard.
“The floor is hard, Nina.” My dad would say: “Editing yourself is difficult.”
Yes it is, dad.  Yes it is.

My parents are my rocks.  I am, and have always been, a “daddy’s girl” but I have cried again and again that “I want my mummy”.  I am going home for Christmas.  I fly today.  No more sleeps. This small tragedy that has touched my life has made me realize how incredibly lucky I am.  I have fallen in love with my brother’s wife, after all these years.  I can’t wait to see my nieces.  The are holes in my blog I can’t or won’t talk about, but my life is overflowing with love.  More now that ever before.  “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe…” (Sorry, Bladerunner joke.)

Someone told me my “aura is strong” today.  Yes, it is, I agreed.  I am on fire.  I am like a comet, but I just don’t know yet if I am going to crash into earth.  “That is probably up to you”, they said.

Okay, that’s it for today.  I fly to England in 4 hours and I haven’t even thought about packing.  I have so many gifts for people I will likely have to take 2 suitcases.  Trevor told me to be sure one can fit inside the other so I can bring them back.  I will likely end up with the randomest of things to wear.  It doesn’t matter.  What do you really need?  Passport and wallet.  Everything else I can borrow from my mum – and I can buy a toothbrush 🙂

I am a 40-year old woman that still sleeps with a cuddly toy.  (“AND A CUDDLY TOY”.  Sorry Americans, that is a stupid English TV joke.  I think it might be “The Generation Game”).  It’s a stuffed dog.  Her name is Tina.  She is older than I am.  She used to be a nightdress case and she was pink and white.  But now all her fur has been loved off and she has been patched and repatched more than a WW2 soldier.  And I love her and take her to bed with me every night. What does that say about me?

Here is a poem.  I wrote it in my head in 2 minutes on the toilet, so don’t expect Shakespeare.  It is called Insomonia:

Insomnia.

I can’t sleep.  Again.

I do my routine.  Chamomile tea, magnolia extract.  Checkity, check, check.

I doze.  Fitfully.

I wake up.  I start multitasking.  I’m doing nothing well.

Fuck it all to hell.

I have been staying at a friend’s house for a few days.  When I was at home last night, I found another friend had dropped off some flowers for me.  I think they are heart-breakingly beautiful in their naturalness and the way “real” flowers discard leaves.

Trevor said when I am gone, there is a “Nina-shaped hole in him”.  If anything, that just makes me love him more 🙂 .

WOW!  My friend’s Margaret’s 9 year old wrote this!  She (and he) gave me permission to post it.

I sent him Sylvia Plath’s Elm that I quoted earlier in the blog.  Hope it isn’t too dark for a 9 year old!

…sometimes your co-workers give you a pair of persimmons…

or a box of chocolates!

I know I can’t have everything I want, but I want the bills to stop arriving for my dead daughter.

24 hours on the West side of LA.

Full set of pix are here (so far!)

As so often when I’m busy, these posts are coming out of order….  I’ve had a few business trips bump into each other, burned the candle at both ends working 12+ hour days and then played even harder (so hard, in fact, that I broke my big toe again and ended up with a cold that left me hoarse!)  Friday, I left work early to enjoy some “me time”.  I booked myself a back-to-back acupuncture appointment and a massage (both with the same therapist).

The massage was mind-blowing.  Not only does my acupuncturist have magic hands, but he is also hilarious.  At one point he was using an unusual technique on my upper chest.  I said “I have never had anyone do that before”.  His dry and immediate reply was: “What?  You have never had your acupuncturist fondle your breasts before.  How strange.”  I laughed (at least inwardly) for a good hour about that 🙂 .

Immediately afterwards, I delivered some purses to a colleague at work, coincidentally received an amazingly-thoughtful gift in return, and went shooting with my friend Paul.

I have never been to an indoor range before.  I wasn’t all that sure I would enjoy it, but I will try anything once.  It was AMAZING!

We shot the shit out of some zombies.  They definitely won’t mess with us again.  There was some hilarity whilst I was working out how to hold the guns.  (Paul is left-handed and inadvertently showed me completely the wrong grip.  When we figured it out, he said I was a natural (and I can’t resist bragging about it!)).  I started with boobs (the bigger target), but finished with waist and privates.  He concentrated on the head shots.  Braaaiiiiiiiins!! 🙂 .  Haven’t had such a transcendent day in ages.

As I knew there would be, there have been good days and bad days.  Today was one of the good days.

Last night I went to a friend’s Christmas party.  If there was a way to “win” Christmas, I think I walked away with the motherlode.  A lot more unnecessary dancing Christmas crap, to warm the cockles of my heart (and put the fear of dread into Trevor.)  

I switched gears to yoga, and on my way back stopped for dinner fixings.  Steak for Trevor, potatoes to mash, chives, mushrooms, tomatoes, pomegranate, fresh black-eyed peas and red wine.  My topbox was full of bars of soap, kombuccha teas, milk, and other necessities, so almost everything else got stuffed in my yoga bag (except the stargazer lilies that were thrust down my jacket).  Packing up and getting on the bike made some guy laugh and he asked if he could take my photo.  I asked him to return the favour 🙂 .