Category — life

Outside the world is waking up.

Flowers are in bloom, the leaves on the trees are unfurling after their long winter sleep, and the birds are up early chirping happy little tunes.

I am not blooming or chirping. I am cuddled up to a box of tissues and a box of Life brand cold and sinus medication. The crinkle of  the foil on the back of those cold medication blister packs is all the music I want to hear.

I know I have to get up. I know I have to get up, shower, dress and be part of the productive work-a-day world. There is a novel to write, blog posts to keep up (ha!), travel to book, and I need to think of what I might make for dinner. I get up and discover that I can feel each individual carpet fibre against the bottom of my feet. The windows are all closed but it’s freezing in here. I feel like I’m my own personal winter and my skin has got thinner, the sort of thinness you’d normally only find in over-ripe plums. My brain is convinced that my pajamas are made of chain mail and twigs instead of cotton. My sinuses are angry. My taste buds are dead. My hair hurts.

So I have spent the day drawing the picture below while watching Black Books and drinking tea.

I was just reading a blog post, The real life drama of the tween, by my cousin Carri on her website Solas. Her blog post is in response to a Facebook posting by one of her friends that read as follows:

“What the hell am I supposed to do about my skinny 10 year old begging me to let her go on a diet? I have told her again and again that she’s not fat that she is skinny but she’s not believing me. Any suggestions?”

Is this really the state of things now? Ten year old girls who feel so crappy about their bodies that they beg to go on diets?

But, then I think back to being ten, about the little clique of mean girls in my class who made fun of my clothes, my hair, my lack of fashion and verve and chic. These little girls had the super cool jelly shoes, their cute pink runners were covered in friendship pins, their arms were festooned with the jelly bracelets that were so popular. Me? Not so much. Even my sturdy and serviceable school supplies were fodder for these girls! They had Tweety Bird Trapper-Keepers and pencil cases covered in the coolest cartoon characters. I had normal pencils and plain plastic binders.

I remember feeling so angry that my mother refused to spend the extra cash on the cooler stuff – I didn’t care if it broke or lasted or not, I just wanted to be like everyone else.

I wanted to be prettier, more fashionable, I wanted boys to think I was pretty and smart (but not too smart, not smarter than him anyway).  I was always skinny as a kid, and later that became an issue too. All my friends started getting boobs and I remained flat-chested. They started to have curves, and I had the shape of a ruler. Even being skinny didn’t make me happy.

Maybe it isn’t so far-fetched after all that ten year old girls feel pressured to look a certain way – we pressure each other into unrealistic behaviour and expectations all the time.

I’ve sometimes wished I could travel back in time and tell my ten year old self (and some of my older selves too) a few things:

1. The people making fun of you are not happy with themselves either. They are making fun of you so you won’t have the chance to make fun of them first.
2. Being smart is awesome (I think it’s cooler now to be smart anyway, but I could be wrong).
3. While others spend their lives chasing trends and purchasing the latest gadgets to look cool, you will actually be cool by not wasting your time and money.  This stuff becomes obsolete and passé faster than you can pay it off, so if you don’t actually need it, re-think buying it.
4. If you have a passion for something, pursue it – and don’t let anyone, not even your parents, discourage you.
5. Being a jerk to other people will not make you feel better about yourself. The little high you get from spreading your misery doesn’t last.
6. Don’t bother with magazines that tell you how to look or act to please someone else. Read a science magazine or a good book instead.
7. Starving yourself will make you tired, mean and unhappy. Don’t do it.
8. You only get the one set of eyes, so if you need glasses, wear them. You don’t look dorky.
9. Wear whatever you feel happiest in and remember, all those other girls in the skinny jeans and tight tops are horribly uncomfortable and self-conscious.
10. It’s OK to listen to music you actually like and to listen to lots of different kinds of music. It’s good to have broader tastes than the just the top 40.
11. The people you see on TV and in magazines don’t look like that in real life. They look perfect because they have a team of make-up artists, professional photographers, special lighting and an army of Photoshop experts working on them. It’s not real and it’s not worth striving for.
12. It’s OK to stop being friends with people who are never there for you, or have no interest in your life or you as a person. Be polite, but save your friendship for people who really care about you, and for whom you really care in return.

I would also tell my younger self that once you get to university, things begin to change for the better. The little cliques and self-important assholes you went to school with either move away (hurrah!) or go to the same school, but are suddenly a lot less important.

In university, you’re still going to meet a lot of jackasses, but their hoity-toity, holier-than-thou crap will be largely academic snobbery – and that is always amusing to laugh at. Later, in the work force, you’ll meet more people who never really left elementary school or high school in terms of how they think. They will still be bullies, still never listen to anyone but themselves and their little crowd of butt-kissers and they will still be miserable.

You won’t be able to change any of them, but you can choose to not become one of them.

So, ten year old (and current) self, be happy. Don’t worry about trying to please people you don’t actually like – you will never win that battle. Wear what you want, follow your passions, eat cheese fries sometimes and let the mean people of this world just pass you by.

Sometimes, I have delusions of grandeur and I convince myself that I am a fabulous baker.

Those chocolate chip cookies I made that were burned on the bottom and runny on the top? Crappy flour, bad recipe and the oven malfunctioned. Hardly my fault.

The birthday cake that had a rock hard centre? Faulty batter courtesy of Duncan Hines, and the worst cake pan in the universe.

Anyway, Joe just started a new job, so I went to the market and bought us something a little extravagant for dinner:  a whole chicken brought up and hand fed by monks, fresh vegetables picked by angels and a box of Betty Crocker angel-food cake mix. With rainbow sprinkles.

How hard could angel food cake be?

As it turns out, not only can I not be trusted with cake mix or baking, but I am capable of making a mess that would terrify even the most hardened Molly Maid crew.

I blame the electric beater I used.

I turned it on and mixed up a rainbow bit batter that would make Martha Stewart envious – but then to clear the beaters, I turned up the beater and splattered batter all over everything ever;

Walls? Check.

The grill, knife block and wall? Check.

My clothes, face and hair? Check.

The counter, floor and oven door? check, checkity, check!

But, the batter that was left over made a very decent cake which I then collapsed by decorating it in very heavy butter cream icing.

However, Joe, the best husband ever, ate my mostly collapsed cake with great enjoyment. In fact, I had only one piece of it (just to be polite to myself) and could often find Joe cutting himself a generous piece and sneaking off with it.

I have no idea what I’ve learned from this except that angel food cake batter in the eye is very fizzy and hurts.