Updated Doings

So, here's how things stand at the moment;

Job
Ain't got one. I was on a four month contract at The Job Which Shall Not Be Named, and I was fully expecting to get a variation of 'don't let the door hit your arse on the way out!' on my last day. So imagine my complete and utter bafflement when I was asked by my boss to stay on. Huh. Maybe I wasn't the world's most hilariously underqualified and useless employee. Would have been nice if someone had mentioned that to me at some point while I was still employed there - that may have stopped my from hiding in the toilet in tears, convinced at my own uselessness, on what got to be an almost daily basis.

However, I truly despised that job, so rather than deigning to accept the offer I told my boss to cram it with walnuts, and I flounced out the door, pausing only to give him the finger and dispense a few choice insults amongst my former colleagues. I'm kidding of course. Though there was a small amount of flouncing. What I did do was go to the pub with D and the Hair Hamster, and get nicely sozzled. We had a very long, very boozy lunch, during which we cackled immoderately and were very bitchy. Then we went back to the office and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at this website and giggling like the drunken idiots we are;

(click the picture for more)

I think my ex-boss was genuinely surprised that I didn't want to stay, but I don't think I could have taken another day of it. It wasn't a bad job, and it wasn't especially difficult, but Heavens to Betsy it was tedious. I ended up so utterly stressed out by trying to fill the painful hours between 9 and 5 that I literally could not eat during the day. I always thought people who claimed to be too busy or stressed to eat were full of crap, because I pretty much live for food. But for the last four months I have been getting by on toast for breakfast and crisps and wine for dinner. I haven't started looking for another job yet, though I have started sorting out my resume today, and I plan to start the job hunt over the next few days.

Hair
Either it's slowing down, or I'm freaking out about it less, but either way I'm feeling better about the hair thing. I went to the doctor to get checked out, and he couldn't think of any good reason why I should be losing my hair, so he tested me for everything - 'I am throwing the book at you, young lady' were his exact words. I got my results, and everything is normal. Better than normal. I'm practically the bionic freaking woman, especially considering how appalling my diet has been lately, and that I haven't eaten meat in six months and have a more less vegan diet these days. Iron - awesome, cholesterol and blood pressure - exemplary, hormones, thyroid, vitamin levels - normal, normal, normal. Huzzah!

But doctor, why oh why is my hair falling out? His reply was '....ummm....stress? Yeah, probably just stress.' Because my hormone levels are normal he's pretty certain that it's not female pattern baldness - he thinks it's telogen effluvium, and he said that things could be back to normal within a year or so. Which seems like a very, very long time when handfuls of hair are falling out everyday, but it feels a lot better to be able to put a name to what's going on. The problem is that one of the triggers for telogen effluvium is stress. Guess what makes you stressed? Your hair falling out! Which causes more hair to fall out and so on ad absurdium. So I'm basically just trying to get myself back on track now. I'm having a sober month, I'm eating veggies til they come out my ears* and walking every day, and I'm starting to realise how tightly wound I have been lately. I was reading a book review the other day, and this quote from the book really struck me;

I was nothing but tension. . . . I brushed my teeth ferociously, as if I wanted to file them down. I yanked on my socks as if determined to thrust my toes right through them. . . . When I pushed a command button, I did so as if it was my personal strength that must send the elevator to the sixth floor, or raise the door of the garage. While I shaved I tensed my jaw, while I read I tensed my throat, while I ate (too fast) I tensed my forehead, while I talked I tensed my shoulders, while I listened I tensed my neck, while I drove I tensed everything.

That could be me he's describing - I had a tiny panic attack in the pub the other night, which hasn't happened in years, and my shoulders have been hovering around the level of my ears for weeks now. So the plan for the immediate future is to calm - the - fuck - down and get myself together (by the way, don't think I'm not aware of how appallingly middle class and privileged my problems are, because I know that 'I'm feeling a bit stressed' is pretty much the epitome of a first world problem, but I'm not going to apologise for that). To whit and thusly, I will be reading Game of Thrones, practising my Spanish grammar (there's something unexpectedly soothing about the mindlessness of conjugating**) and spending a lot of time pottering about in the kitchen.

OK, so that's the updated version of things at the moment. I have a story about a BBQ, and another one about seagulls and crazy ladies, both of which I will get to soon. Until then, you must wait with bated breath - can you stand the excitement!?

*which may point to a more serious medical problem than that of my hair falling out
**that's what she said

I haven't a hair in the world

Hahahahaha. No, seriously though, my hair is falling out. 

There are so many reasons why this could be. There are a few things in my life at the moment that are causing me a lot of stress. I'm taking a break from the pill for a while, so my hormones could be out of whack. I've been vegetarian since we got back from England and haven't been taking my iron supplements, so it might be anemia. It could be whatever it is that's causing my cankle. I also have dandruff (sorry, I know that's gross), and I could just be scratching too hard. But what terrifies me is that it could simply be that my hair is falling out. 

My grandmother - my father's mother - looms large in the imaginations of her grandchildren and has assumed almost mythic status. She died when I was a baby and I have no memories of her, but I really wish I'd had a chance to get to know her. She was a leopard print wearing, poodle owning, chain smoking, home gin brewing dynamo who raised five children on barely any money. She was also bald, and owned a selection of wigs, turbans and headpieces, which are the subject of a series of long running jokes on my dad's side of the family. But even though I've always thought the jokes were funny, I've also always lived in fear that the same thing will happen to me. I've got very, very fine hair - I don't think I've ever been to the hairdresser had not had them comment on it: 'oh my God! Your hair is like a baby's hair! I've never seen hair this fine before!' - and it grows at glacial speed. I've always been careful not to overdo it with hair colouring or styling, because I want to protect the precious little hair I already have. I mean, I've never been at comb-over level of thin hair, but it's always been a sensitive issue for me. 

And now this. I've been crying on and off all day. I know it's appalling and shallow, but I think I would be less scared if I found out I had some horrible disease. At least you can explain that to people. Long, thick hair is so fundamental to the way we perceive a woman's attractiveness, so much so that I can't help but feel that female baldness is repellant (sorry if it has happened to you, I don't mean to be cruel), and I feel sick to my stomach to think it might be an inevitability for me. 

I guess I just drew the short straw in the genetic lottery - out my grandmother's four grownup female grandchildren, I'm the only one this has happened to and I can't help but feel angry in a futile sort of way.

I'm going to get checked out on Thursday, and the vain and irresponsible part of my brain wants it to be an underlying health problem, because at least then I can fix it, or at least treat it. If it's just that my life as someone with a full head of hair is over, there's not really anything I can do but get fitted for a wig, buy a poodle and take up smoking.

Fingers crossed.  

What a pretty place I live in

Last week we were in Manly for our anniversary dinner. It had rained all day, but by the time we got to there the sun had come out and the beach looked absolutely beautiful. Gosh but we're lucky to live here.

Moping

Less than two weeks left. How did that happen? I mostly don’t want to leave. I love it here, and I’ve been enjoying myself far too much to have felt homesick. But I have been thinking a lot about going home over the last couple of days, mainly because of the practical things we’ll need to sort out like packing, distributing or disposing of things we can’t take home, you know the sort of thing. But also because I’m really looking forward to seeing my family. I had initially written that I am also looking forward to being back where things are more familiar, but I looking back on it I realised that that isn’t strictly true. I feel utterly comfortable here and the slight strangeness of it all is part of the appeal. But I am looking forward to seeing familiar people. 

I was looking back over Everything but the Squeal, and came across this passage;

... it doesn’t matter what kind of life you’ve made for yourself away from home, how integrated you have become, how content you are in your foreign land. You’ll never entirely escape those subtle, inexpressible feelings of loss that assail you when you least expect them, fleeting memories of a place that formed and nurtured you, but which you can no longer see or touch.

and it reminded me of a bit from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where, in an unusually gag-free and earnest paragraph, Douglas Adams talks about the idea that we’re all attached to the place of our birth by a long, invisible string. The further we go from home, and the faster we move, the more the string gets stretched, but it can only stretch so far before it snaps. I suppose we need contact with the familiar on a regular basis or we’ll snap, so to speak. We’ve been lucky in that sense. For one, we have each other for support, which has made it all much less scary. But we’ve also had my mum and Jo’s sister come to visit, and those visits helped to remind me that the familiar world is carrying on without us, and that it will all be there for us to go back to when we decide we want to.