Using my finely tuned powers of figuring stuff out I realised that this style of blogging wasn’t working for me any more. With only a handful of posts published in 2010 it’s a far cry from the days of 2009 when I’d stay up till 4 in the morning getting orders packed and making sure I had written something for the blog.

These days all my time is spent eating food and, yeah, eating food. Oh and hanging out with that guy I like. So with an abundance of time and still nothing productive going on I realised it was time to stop being such a lazy bitch and fix it. I signed up to a couple of temping agencies and got a job for the month of August (yay me) in order to pay back some of the money I borrowed from my savings. I finally got around to getting my awesome flatmate to help me with a new logo/blog header/business cards. I started cooking real food instead of eating from a packet. And I finally arranged to see Mum after 8 months of not seeing her.

None of that fixed the lack of writing going on though. And my exceptionally boring temping job seems to be leaving me with more down time than up time. Fellow blogger/friend/super organised woman that seems to have actual discipline over herself and manages to actually work for and achieve her goals Kelly, suggested we meet to discuss bloggy plans and I’m quite happy for any excuse to meet in a cafe so we met this afternoon. I needed something that would be easy, that would allow me to write about whatever I wanted but having something quirky and structured about it. Ideally a barrage of wit and sarcasm would flow out of me like bloggers I’ve already mentioned numerous times on Cupcakes and Mace, but I’m just not great at writing like that. And then I realised the simple solution is to write here the way I write in my head. In letter form.

When I’m frustrated with someone I write them a letter telling them why they’re a dick and then I hide it. When I’m in love with something I tweet. Now whenever I have an opinion on anything I’ll be sending you a letter to tell you all about it.

Be prepared.

xo

Kim

Excerpts from Christina Hendricks: A Letter to Men, published in Esquire May 2010

“We love your body. If we’re in love with you, we love your body. Your potbelly, everything. Even if you’re insecure about something, we love your body. You feel like you’re not this or that? We love your body. We embrace everything. Because it’s you.

Speaking of your body, you don’t understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven’t smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It’s intoxicating. It’s heady.

We remember forever what you say about the bodies of other women. When you mention in passing that a certain woman is attractive — could be someone in the office, a woman on the street, a celebrity, any woman in the world, really — your comment goes into a steel box and it stays there forever. We will file the comment under “Women He Finds Attractive.” It’s not about whether or not we approve of the comment. It’s about learning what you think is sexy and how we might be able to convey it. It’s about keeping our man by knowing what he likes.

We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a compliment. Could be just a comment. Those things you say are stored away in the steel box, and we remember these things verbatim. We remember what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it.”

“Remember what we like. When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing. Which freaked him out. I thought, Oh, my God, I mentioned this three or four weeks ago and talked about it briefly, but he was really listening to me. And he actually went out and researched and found this thing for me. It was amazing.”

“About ogling: The men who look, they really look. It doesn’t insult us. It doesn’t faze us, really. It’s just — well, it’s a little infantile. Which is ironic, isn’t it? The men who constantly stare at our breasts are never the men we’re attracted to.

There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It’s an underused word. It’s a very special word. “You are radiant.” Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching.

Marriage changes very little. The only things that will get a married man laid that won’t get a single man laid are adultery and whores. Intelligence and humor (and your smell) are what get you laid. That’s what got you laid when you were single. That’s what gets you laid when you’re married. Everything still works in marriage: especially intelligence and humor. Because the sexiest thing is to know you.”

It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and B (manfriend/flatmate) is heating up breakfast when he barges into my room frantically asking if I’m still awake and telling me to turn on the light. His distress is freaking me out but the only thing that comes to mind is that a huge rat decided to come out of its home in the roof and lunged at him in the kitchen.

Not so.

He’s standing in the kitchen when there’s a knocking at the window, he looks up to find a woman standing at the window, in the rain and wind, not really doing anything. He’s trying to ask her wtf she’s doing and decides to open the door a fraction. She asks the time and says she’s staying at the hotel a few doors down. Not knowing what’s going on B says he’s shutting the door now and that’s when he runs to my room.

Understandably he’s little freaked out that she’s going to attack him when he leaves for work.

Not so.

Instead he finds her standing in the middle of the road like a zombie.

“What is it about this house that attracts all the freaks?”

Alternative title: If you are a family member stop reading now

I was an average to early starter when it comes to sex. I had a steady boyfriend at 15 and I was allowed to go on the pill even though I wasn’t having sex yet. And it was probably a good thing too. When it came time to have sex neither me or my boyfriend knew how to use a condom. We had been told the importance of condoms, but seeing how we were both virgins figured it wasn’t big deal that we couldn’t get the thing to work and had sex anyway.

Same story with the next guy I was with, another virgin. Another guy who hadn’t learnt there’s a right way and wrong way to put on a condom on. Another time we gave up trying to use one after three attempts.

It seems pretty stupid to look back now. Who can’t figure out how to roll on a stupid piece of latex? But at the time it seemed extremely complicated, even for this apparently smart student.

What’s even stupider though is that not one PE teacher thought it was appropriate to tell us how to use a condom correctly.

Walking down Cuba with my friend Kelly yesterday afternoon we talked about our frightening realisation that we may never work “normal” jobs again.

Until a year ago I was quite happily resigned to the notion that I would work in an office my whole life. The weekends would be for living and weekdays for working. I planned to be well paid with little responsibility, never having to think very hard for myself. This lazy work life would lend itself well to a fun social life, including marriage, travel, and a mortgage. The prospect of this existence didn’t make me want to curl up and die, it didn’t even feel like my only option. It’s what I wanted!

And then everything changed. I no longer wanted someone telling me what to do. I didn’t care about earning a lot of money, as long as I could pay my bills. My relationship broke up. The thought of being tied to a mortgage became scary. And I realised that I wasn’t the same person any more, I was free of all that. I could live in the moment.

The problem for me and Kelly is that this path is not a usual one in our families, so there is no blueprint for us to follow. We’re making our own rules and it’s quite daunting.

And exciting.

Do you ever find yourself in such strange situations, or situations in which you’re acting different to your usual self, and it feels like you’re not actually there? Instead you’re looking at it as a bystander. Like it’s your body doing it and not you?

I’ve found myself in too many of these situations lately. Usually when I’m not entirely comfortable with where I am, or when I need to put on a persona to get through an event.

I want to be fully present in every moment, but in order to keep myself happy I try too hard to look at everything objectively. With my head and not just my heart. And it works for the most part. I’m pretty good at forcing my mind to believe I feel a certain way about something.
It means I don’t get caught up in my emotions and break down. But it also means I often push my feelings to the back.

Will they explode one day?

Will I explode one day?

I found a place to live you guys!

These days I’m reluctant to attribute anything that happens to fate, a plan, or any of that guff. But sometimes things feel like they happen for a reason. I didn’t get call backs from the places with skylights, the friend of a friend with the big room just down the road from where I live now completely dicked me around and didn’t show up to the viewing and then didn’t txt me back. But then I get a message from an acquaintance/friend saying one of their flatties just announced he’s moving out.

Turns out it was the best news I’d had all month. The room is big, cheap, and close to town. The flatmates are: Kate and Jason – they both blog (Kate at Lovelorn Unicorn, one of my favourite cute blogs; and Jason at Imaginary Network, amazing photography!), are both awesome people, and collectively are the cutest couple in the world! And they’re getting married in less than two weeks. And Brendan and Sophie, I don’t know these guys much at all but they both seem awesome and down to earth too.

I don’t have a partner to fall back on and hibernate with if I hate my flatmates anymore, so I was particularly hopeful I’d find somewhere to live with people I don’t hate. Result!

And the excitement of finding a new place to live only gets better as I realise I can decorate my room however I like. There will only be one persons junk in it. Mine! I can use a gingham table cloth and put fairy lights on the wall if I want to.

I’ve been scouring the design blogs for inspiration the last few days and here’s a few of the ideas I’ve loved.

Looks like I’m attracted to colour. Who knew? Very unlike me, although my favourite blue is showing through in quite a few of these pictures.

A huge thanks to everyone who has been looking after me the past month, getting me out of the house, and generally being a distraction. Especially the wonderful Jo who has given me a place to stay, cooked for me, and kept me entertained with 80s and 90s DVDs and a LAN party every night for half of the past 3 weeks. It means a lot to me, and has made a hard time a whole lot easier! You’re the best.

The apathy will subside. My usual happy disposition will return.

I am moving on, finding a flat, finding a job, and doing what I like, when I like.
My motto for 2010 is “trust your instincts”. I have been ignoring myself for too long.

It feels strange to be moving on so quickly. Right now it has been less than three weeks since the separation, but it is starting to feel like it was a long time ago. All the feelings of disappointment, frustration, and annoyance I buried for the sake of compromise and living in a relationship, have replaced the reasons I wanted to make it work. At this moment I am more upset at having my happy bubble burst than losing the person I thought I would grow old with. But then my feelings change every day depending on what I’ve heard, what I’ve read, what I’ve remembered.

Ladies and Gents, if you like you should put a ring on it (not necessarily a literal ring, but make your feelings known to all concerned parties). Otherwise move on, and stop wasting time.

Thank you all for your help, concern, and best wishes. I can’t do it without you. xxoo

Let me tell you about how I met The Boy. It’s a true soap opera like story; a bunch of coincidences, naive optimism, and teenage lust lead us to where we are now, almost 8 years later.

It started like many stories of this nature do. Girl meets boy, they fall in love, he consistently acts like a douche and then goes overseas on holiday with his family. She retaliates by hooking up with someone else.

I was 16, and decided to head to Bowentown on New Years eve with a few people from the supermarket I worked at. One of the guys uncles was travelling with the gypsy fair and we planned to camp at their site.

As it happened The Boy was also travelling with the gypsy fair for the summer. His unusual name was a talking point, as always, and a few of the young ‘gypsies’ started to pal around with our group.

I don’t really remember the full events of the night, but I remember very vividly going to the portaloo and just as I finished the countdown to midnight started. I very graciously leapt out of the toilet and kissed him as the new year started.

That started a year of texting, and when his phone was lost, writing, and then eventually emails. We have a bag each of the letters we wrote each other. I lived in Ngaruawahia, he lived in Hastings about 6 hours away, and as school students who weren’t in a relationship – due to distance, and the fact we didn’t really know each other – we didn’t talk on the phone or visit. The only other time we saw each other was in April when he came for short visit.

During the year I was in and out of relationships with both douche and another boy from school.
I left school half way through the year and went to tech and near the end of the year douche decided to call it off via phone and I never saw him again. Instead of getting too upset I jumped online to talk to The Boy. He was moving to Wellington for uni in the new year and on a whim we decided to go together.
We had seen each other in person on a total of 4 separate days so I booked a bus ticket to Hastings to spend a week with The Boy to make sure we actually liked each other in real life. I met both of his parents and had a great time. A couple of days into the trip we had “the talk” and made it official. That was on December the 2nd 2002 – 7 years ago today.

I went home and prepared to move out. After xmas The Boy came to spend New Years with me and get my stuff. We filled up his car and moved everything to Hastings. And here’s where the story continues to be a soap opera…I got sick.

Well I’d actually been sick for a while. But I didn’t really realise it. In Hastings the symptoms go too bad to ignore and I was admitted to hospital, thankfully The Boy’s mum was willing to look after me.

We needed to find a flat in Wellington so The Boy caught a ride down with his dad and stayed with his sister spending a few days trudging the streets looking for a place while I was laid up in bed recovering. Once I was released I bused to Wellington with nothing but a bag of clothes and a blow up mattress until the rest of our sparse possessions arrived and we could buy some furniture.

And here we are 7 years later. Love you hun.