NAILS!
These are 'Dorothy Who?' from the 2009 re-release of the China Glaze 'Wizard of Ooh-aahz' collection.  I think the colour on my actual nails has gone a bit wack because I went swimming the day after painting my nails, so this picture is with two days' wear, which is quite awesome.  I'm five days down the line now and there's only a teeny tiny chip on my thumb.

I found application to be a bit of a pain- it went on quite streaky and uneven so I needed three coats to get a reasonable colour coverage.  However, now it's on, I absolutely love looking and my nails, because I'm fascinated by the glitter!

Despite the slight application pain, this has turned out beautifully and is certainly lasting.  Definitely worth it, especially for £2 as part of a bargain China Glaze haul!

Alternative views of mental health

(image from Dorling Kindersley)

I went to a yoga class today which I thoroughly enjoyed (thanks to the entertaining and passionate teacher, in part).  I am now ignoring my aching back from over-estimating exactly how far I could twist.
One thing that strikes me at my yoga classes is how self-absorbed they make me- in a beautiful way, not a narcissistic one.  All I think about is the cracking of my joints as I flow from one posture to another, the depth of my breathing, and how far I can comfortably sink into a certain pose.  It allows my mind to become completely consumed by the immediate physical demands of the class and become unfettered from its daily stresses and worries.

I prioritise going to yoga and the gym, as it is this challenging routine which allows me to transcend my habit of incessant worrying and attain both mental and physical relief.  I read a little while ago that the NHS was thinking of introducing yoga and mediation courses and I think they would be invaluable.  My experience of therapy group coupled with regular gym attendance has led to my being able to identify crippling emotions and work through them but also take a safe and healthy refuge from them in exercise.  Certainly my yoga teacher today likened deep meditation to CBT, as it allows you to commune with your intuition and consider what in your life you may need to change.

The trouble is obviously primarily money: good yoga teachers and appropriate spaces will require both time and financing.  It also appears difficult to try and exact change for many mental healthy disorders, such as with the often prohibitively expensive cost of therapists and fiendishly long NHS waiting list, along with the fact one's mental healthy cannot readily be physically assessed.

I would love to see more people being able to enjoy yoga and the stress alleviating effects it brings.  Perhaps the government should promote a range of exercise activities not just to combat obesity, but also for its population's mental health.

Distracting myself through sparkles. And weddings.

Contrary to the title's suggestion, I'm not going to any weddings at the moment, nor am I in fact getting married.  I've instead been busily occupying myself by stalking admiring on Facebook the weddings of former schoolmates and been getting somewhat confused.

Now, I love weddings.  In many respects I am that ridiculous image of the girl who's been planning her wedding since the year dot and thinks about it probably more than is healthy.  Besides thinking about cakes, and wondering how a girl can incorporate (potentially) two massive cuddly dinosaurs into some mythical day in the future, they're something which is important to me both because of my personal beliefs and my religion, as for me they are the ultimate way to solidify a relationship.  But obviously a marriage is so much more than the wedding day.  Also, I am not a mental Christian as unfortunately I seem to be labelled as as soon as I mention it, thus I think same-sex marriage is great, if you want to live together; fine, and I'm a big believer in the 'try before you buy' attitude of premarital sex.

Ignoring that wall of text, what I've really been rather freaked out by is the fact my classmates seem so young!  My friends and I have counted 10 people out of a year of 90 who either have children, are married, or both, and whilst I suppose that is the cliche of the older you get, the more weddings you go to, it seems like a huge amount.  I love to think about weddings but I think that if I were getting married now I'd absolutely freak the fuck out.  I'm happy for the fact these people have found the person they wish to spend the rest of their life with, but so many people are still at university, still studying, now with children and a husband, and that seems weird to me.  It just seems like surely people, and relationships, will change outside of the student bubble, and a marriage seems like a massive thing to have to try and change through whilst you yourself might not know what's going on.  I'm sure I'm being too cynical/ immature about this though and no doubt they'll have charming marriages, revelling in years of successful communication and maturity.  But we'll see.

The sparkles of the title refer to my new nailpolish today- China Glaze's 'Dorothy Who?' from their recreated Wizard of Ooh-Aahz collection (2009).  It's bright blue with silver sparkles and freaking awesome.  If I can find my camera (still have not even attempted unpacking) I will show it off.  Or maybe I'll suffice with a rubbish webcam photo.

Applications

I thought I had avoided the deluge of applications and their associated fear and inherent worry about making some hideous mistake by my choice of continuing my student experience into an MA.  But no- admittedly my applications are not a case of OMG I NEED A JOB RIGHT NAO straight out of my degree, but they are for things I am passionate about and will very strongly influence my future career prospects.

I have applied to be a writer on Domestic Sluttery, a blog which I avidly consume and love the writer's styles, and so now I am quietly worrying to myself about that.  I am also applying to a gamut of national papers and some Sheffield ones in the hope of procuring some work experience somewhere.  One of my former editors at the Forge not only won the Guardian bursary to study for her PgDip at Sheffield in Journalism but has also had work experience at the Guardian and The Times and is paid to write for her local paper.  I just hope I can maybe have her success- she is such a lovely person but I am so insanely jealous of her!

Journalism with its incredible glut of applications and cut-throat competition is a field where every contact, every experience, and every article published is essential in freeing yourself from the herd.  I just hope I can attempt to impress someone enough to let me in.

Musings and rantings

Following a very unpleasant comment I received on Saturday from a 'gentleman' leaning out of his car window and shouting "How much darlin'?", I have been musing about the way that women's dress is received in daily life.  On Saturday I was wearing about 1 1/2 inch high heels and a knitted dress from h&m, which was short but covered everything, and also walking with my brother (all scruffy 6ft 3 of him).  And yet this guy felt it was appropriate to shout at me that I looked like a prostitute.  I responded by sticking my middle finger up at him, to which his passenger guffawed, but what in the hell made it OK for him to say that?  I must admit it actually irked and upset me for quite a sizeable chunk of the rest of my day.

Why is this perceived as OK?  When doing internships and wearing formal dresses, I get catcalls, wandering through city centres in skirts gets comments- although it always seems to be if I'm wearing a skirt and generally not if I've got a low cut top on, even though I consider my boobs more interesting than my legs!

But why the comments?  Noone comments if a guy goes out wearing shorts or something.  Is a woman's body perceived as public property?  Why can I not wear a dress and shoes that I happen to think make me look pretty without becoming seen as just an easily accessible sex object?  It seems as if a woman's dress is often taken as part of a performance and indeed a call for lewd comments- regardless of whether she is dressing for herself or even trying to impress someone, her body becomes part of the public domain.  Is it a way of reprimanding a woman who is seen as stepping out of line, in that women should not be trying to dress attractively?  Or do men like the man in the car think that if they demand something sexual from a woman they happen to see, she should be flattered and acquiesce?

I certainly am not prepared to accept comments like this.  Petty as it may be, I'll always yell or make a rude gesture, whilst the mental former martial artist part of me is dying to get into a fight with the commenter.  But is this the right response?  Is it empowering to tell them to fuck themselves, or better to not dignify such action with any recognition?

The return.

So I neglected this blog and went back to the mental expulsion of tumblr, and occasionally I do still post stuff on there, but increasingly I find it's just a car crash of people who are either 15 or have a mental age thereof desperate to expunge their feelings in the most ridiculously overblown ways possible.

I got back home on Saturday evening, having had a rather uncomfortable drive up because my brother decided he wanted to come up as well.  I've spent today sorting out some of my packing; going through washing and sheets, along with planning meals for the family for the next week, which will hopefully go down OK.  I washed the cars at the weekend (although a bird pooed on my car's bonnet this afternoon, how dare it it was so beautifully polished!) and so they were gleaming nicely, but I caught the sun on my neck thanks to my patented skin colour options of burnt or white and now I have a horrible itchy rash which I convinced myself earlier was meningitis.  Holy run-on sentence, batman.  I'm now doped up on anti-histamine tablets so I need to write this and then go wash my face so I can then go collapse in my bed.

I'm feeling very domestic and missing the boy enormously- went to get some paint from Focus earlier and found paint samples, so I started imagining us living together and painting our own house...I think I can be a rather ridiculous individual!

I've been looking to try and join a gym for the three months that I'm home as otherwise I tend to go slightly insane without exercise.  My mum's gym didn't answer the phone so I'll ring them again in the morning and the council-owned gym has me down for an appointment on Wednesday, blatantly a ploy to try and get me to sign up immediately.  We'll see how it goes.

And for now, I actually must head to bed.  G'night all.

I think I've got ridiculously overblown in searching for validation through other people (namely the boy) at the moment- I've barely left him alone today because he seems 'off' with me, and so therefore the natural response is of course to aggravate him the whole day through, as opposed to just accepting that human beings have changeable moods and that it's just natural.  It's like I'm annoyed at him about it or something; quite clearly he hasn't done anything wrong (apart from not making a phone call that he needs for his MA application) but I'm getting all het up and arsey over it.  Le sigh.

Trying to get through my 30 minutes of exercise a day on the Wii Fit, so the carrot of the happy fanfare will at least mean that I have got off my arse for a moment, even if it isn't the most dramatic form of exercise in the world.

I think I'm still hungry; maybe that's why I'm so grouchy.  Made me a very nice carrot and coriander soup today but then managed to cock up the quantities I needed to reheat, so I've had the smallest lunch in the world.  Also, tidying up all the blender stuff to put it away is a miraculous game of tetris in itself, it needs washing up first.  Yay.

Completely forgot what day it was yesterday so ended up compeletely forgetting about therapy group until half 4 (starts at 4).  Ended up legging it out the house and getting there at twenty to five, which wasn't that bad, they'd apparently decided I had forgotten which was indeed true.  The counsellor then sprung on me that he thinks I have issues I'm not admitting to myself- well if I do, I'm damned if I know.  I consider myself fairly self aware, if not excessively so to the point of being bogged down in my own self criticism, and I have nooo clue what secret issues I may be hiding.  FML.

Shit I am in such a pissy mood you guys!

This morning didn't start very well for my grand ideas of spending a day working because after having returned from Future of the Left last night (Dane enjoyed them very much; personally I don't see how guitar feedback and whacking your head on a keyboard-or so it seemed-makes music but there you go) I woke up with horrendous tinnitus and a splitting headache.  My ears are still faintly ringing now, apparently.  So I ended up taking two ibuprofen and going back to sleep for another 3 hours until midday, which is horrendously late for me and kind of wrecked my grand aims of making soup and writing my dissertation.

I have greatly distressed one of my housemates by buying some Camembert yesterday- it's already stunk out the fridge! Apparently the smell of cheese makes her feel sick...but I lurrves me some tasty tasty mould-ripened soft cheese, had it in a mini-pasta bake with tuna, red pepper and red onion tonight and it was soo good!  But I probably won't be getting any kisses tonight o lol o lol.

I have written about another 300 words of my dissertation, but I'm struggling with this chapter, as the Baader-Meinhof complex is such a strange novel due to the fact it is basically historical narrative and not fiction, thus making it very difficult to critically analyse.  I had a couple of brainwaves about themes yesterday during the gig, so was frantically writing on my phone about fears of a Nazi resurgence and the legacy of decolonisation, must have looked a wee bit odd!

I'm aiming to reach the magical half an hour goal on my Wii fit today- thinking about that, it's quite sad that I should be so proud to do such a minimal amount of exercise!  I end up putting on so much weight at uni because whilst I love to cook, I can never think of what to cook and end up being phenomenally lazy, which is never good.

Ended up bickering with the boy today- he has a 2000 word 'learning log' (basically a trumped up homework diary; somewhat ridiculous for the third year of a degree, but I digress) in for tomorrow and hadn't done anything, so I took to nagging him at 2-hourly intervals, and then because he was stressed he got all pissy at me.  I went for the rather immature response of 'didn't your mother ever tell you to do your homework and not leave it til the last minute', which didn't go down that well...but ah well.  Doing my bit to fulfil nagging stereotypes, one step at a time! :p

Tuesday

I have really done very little today, it's most irksome.  It's like I sit here staring at my laptop and occasionally I get a flash of inspiration (as happened earlier and ended up writing about 300 words on the fact that the phrase 'the green book' encapsulates not only Irish lore but the subjugation of the Irish consciousness to an English Protestant identity because Protestant prayer books are green...I think it's an interesting thought, if I do say so myself, but how to fit it in with my theme!?) but it ends up being really hard to attempt to vaguely motivate myself.

I had 50/50 balance on the Wii Fit yesterday morning and then I practiced on mine when I got in and found my balance was 4.6% skewed to the left, the trials of my life! :P

Sent off the article for my MA interview today, rather scary...Hopefully it'll be good enough and I can get a place, or else it's all rather scary, considering my ownership of a flat for next year.

Got back yesterday at about 5, think housemates might have been bitching about me not immediately rushing round to spend time with them, but as the boy pointed out, it's a two-way relationship, they can just as easily choose to come and spend time with me!  I beat myself up so much for not going to spend time with them all the time, but really, what is to stop them getting off their arses and actually coming to chat to me, as opposed to just coming to see me because I am apparently some sort of handy human thesaurus?

I'm also umming and aah-ing over Firefox and Chrome.  I do find Chrome a lot faster, but I'm using the beta release or w/e because otherwise my add-ons won't work, and I've heard that Firefox is a lot more secure.  Thoughts?

Work

I am currently trying to convince myself to do some more work on my dissertation- I figure if I try and bash out about 500 words a day that at least gets me somewhere and 500 words shouldn't be that much, right?  It just seems like an insurmountable task and I'm being so ridiculously lazy and easily distracted- listening to the radio and end up pottering around on Fearne Cotton's twitter...what is becoming of me? :p

Also need to get myself down to the station to talk to someone about the effects of the snow, for this mega-scary article I need to write for my MA..

Off to the cinema with Sophie this afternoon, so that should be jolly :)

It's been a morning of domesticity- I've been doing washing, although I am baffled by how I can spend nearly 4 hours cleaning my bedroom and it seems to be in even more of a mess than it was before!  I've also got my chicken stock out of the freezer to make a sweetcorn and pepper soup.  Been hunting for the recipe online for ages because we had it at work and it was immense, but finally found it in a massive book o'soups that my aunt had.

Indulged my Lush addiction again recently: my face is so soft following purchase of the slightly-derangedly smelling and appearing CoalFace- my face is so soft! I spent ages sitting with BBSeaweed on my face yesterday (a gorgeous fresh facemask)...mmm I smelt so good!

Start.

So this is me attempting to actually keep a proper blog going- there are so many blogs I read and enjoy and I'm hoping to be able to keep the dedication of posting on a fairly regular basis this time, and maybe someone else will enjoy my nonsensical ramblings.

I'm in my final year of my undergraduate degree of English Literature and History at a well-respected UK University, and I'm currently very, very stressed with essays, my dissertation (sorely neglected) and a heap of extra work which has just arrived because of my upcoming interview for a place on the Journalism MA at the same uni.  I'm excited to get an interview, but I have to sit an exam as well as pre-preparing a 400-word article on 'local transport', and it's all rather scary!  I think I can do it, it's just daunting- what happens if my stuff isn't good enough; if I don't get it? I've got a flat for the next academic year; I love the city but I don't want to be paying to live there if I've flunked out of a course...

This morning I woke up with a killer headache, it was like my brain was trying to burst out of my skull.  But painkillers and a lazy morning (bed and a gorgeous Lush honey face mask- my face is so soft!) later, I feel considerably better.

Now to attack one essay, and the dissertation...