Saturday 4 October 2014

Things I have learnt this week part #167

No 1. It is absolutely ok to be obsessed with Sia's amazing Chandelier song and video and watch it at least 6 times. Daily. 

If there was ever a song that in captured my entire 20s - this is it. I met her waaaay back in 2000 when I was presenting a kids' show. She kept swearing and we were recording 'as live' so we had to keep starting over again. The producers were screaming in our earpieces and she could hear - which was mortifying. She was lovely, bonkers and loud. Have no idea who she reminds me of...

No. 2 If you don't ask you don't get.

This week Babble were about to cut my pay in half and I had a small fit. I need that income goddammit!! I worried, felt sick and then decided - speak up, what have you got to lose? It worked. Normal service was resumed and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Mind you, I feel like the rug could be pulled at any given moment. Such is a freelance life...

No. 3 Waiting for a movie you are excited to see to open, is an underrated joy.

Tonight - Gone Girl. Now, I wasn't that jazzed on the book (disliked both main characters so was hard to empathise) but in Fincher's hands this could be a masterpiece. Can-not-wait. I have that friday feeling. Which, as any parent will tell you - ceases to exist the moment you have kids. Weekends are no longer your friends people - they are just 48 hours to entertain small people who piss their pants, demand the world and never thank you anyway.

No. 4 The best advice is: this too shall pass.

At the weekend, my hormones dragged me to a bleak dark place and I just felt utterly overwhelmed and completely numb. Could not see the wood for the huge dark twisty angst trees. Both people I reached out to simply told me to stay in that moment, let it be, acknowledge how I was feeling - and then let it pass. Thank gawd it did. Feeling sane is really quite fabulous. Well, as sane as I get.

No. 5 Patience is a virtue I have yet to master.

Waiting for people to read your script, or let you do a trial or all that jazz takes time. Which is fine - everyone has jobs and lives and is uber busy. But when you are at home staring at a clock - you lose all sense of reason. You think why aren't they calling me? Oh god they hate it. They hate me. They think I can't do it. I can't do it! Who am I trying to kid? I should never have left my job. I should have been a nun. Or a lawyer. Or something. Should I? I'll just eat some more cake and think on it.
Being in my head is EXHAUSTING.

No. 6 Getting a DM tweet can be thrilling.

Especially when it is from your fav ever writer/showrunner in the States.  Oh yes. *GIDDY*

No. 7 Children are sent to test us - but that is why god invented alcohol.

All this SoberOctober business - clearly for people who do not have children. Every night I think, I won't drink, I am busy, I'll do some writing or tidy out that cupboard or whatever. Then I spend an hour making a fab thai dinner and my kids spit it out and demand cherrios instead. Then comes bath time and a floor wetter than the basement of the Titanic. Followed by several meltdowns, a tantrum (that's me) and bedrooms that a twister seems to have visited. I reach for that bottle of red and think, 'there there, it'll all be fine.' And usually after glass 3, it is.

No. 8 That sometimes, when you least expect it, the answer arrives.

So Sproglette's favourite hobby, (apart from talking) is to put items in the narrow spaces between the floorboard in our house or decking outside. It's a special trick indeed, to magpie like, light upon all kinds of shiny objects - necklaces, wedding rings, coins etc - and put them in places where we can never get them back. Two weeks ago was a tiny little nut, inconsequential except it holds her entire tricycle seat together and without it - no bike. I tried everything to retrieve the little nut winking up at me between the decking boards - to no avail. I filed replacing said nut on the 'must get around to doing at some stage of life, no doubt when kid is 18' list of to-dos.

Then, as I walked to school on Wed to collect the kids, I indulged my inner child and crunched through the leaves. No one was around, so I kicked and stamped and had an ace time. (I don't get out much readers...) Suddenly I looked down and there, in the gutter, glinting in the sun, was a tiny silver nut. I pocketed it, thinking 'maybe....' I came home and went outside to the garden, where I lifted the seat, the screw and voila! Like a modern Cinderella, the nut fitted. In this tiny moment, I realised that Paulo Coelho may indeed be right... That the universe does indeed provide after all.

Shame it wasn't a winning lottery ticket, mind.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A very good list indeed! I concur with much of it... bar the point about children spitting out dinner and demanding something else. I have 3 and I have learnt that anything other than zero-tolerance for that kind of behaviour is fatal. You eat what you are given or you go hungry. When you can cook - indeed, when you can pay for some of the food - you are quite welcome to eat as you choose, but for now, you eat what you are given or go hungry. It's fine to have likes, dislikes and to say so, that's fine. I would never deliberately serve something I knew they loathed, but you will eat what you are given. There are no cheerios. There is this supper. The end. NEVERTHELESS (now that my little mini-lecture-unsolicited-advice-rant has ended)... the glass or 3 is... so, so welcome... so welcome... like manna from heaven!