I’m normal … really I am.

Posted on July 14, 2008 by borysSNORC

I’m not sure why, but I seem to have been getting ever more twitchy with the OCD tendencies lately. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with a desire to exert control over my environment due to feelings of complete and total impotence in being able to affect other aspects of my life – like pervasive chronic back pain, reliance on other to help with what should be simple situations as well as the old infertility and IVF bullshit which tends to lurk in the back of my mind on a pretty regular basis. But seeing that acceptance and resignation aren’t really my style I find myself trying to fight the battles I can while studiously attempting to ignore all other issues that steadfastly refuse to submit.

So lately I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated when the so called ‘controllable’ things aren’t what or where they’re supposed to be. Unfortunately it matters not a whit how insignificant these things actually are… because for reasons beyond my feeble comprehension these things tend to take on a life of their own… and those lives have a habit of appearing to be of far greater import than they deserve.

Were it but within my power to achieve, I think I’d live in a house with phenomenally practical storage, perfectly clean with nary a toy or item of clothing out of place. There would a fabulous filing system for the god awful plethora of paper that modern living creates. There would be clean windows, weeded gardens and paths, gutters… my dears… that don’t overflow due to ridiculous amounts of leaf litter. There would be walls covered with floor to ceiling bookcases where items were stowed chronologically by subject. There would be nothing stored below knee height to avoid having to strain one’s back by bending. There would also be curtains that got laundered, windows that got washed, garages and patios that got swept and I know not what else one might be able to achieve were I as fit as my Mom.

Instead I occasionally look back at something I have done and see my desire for order subconsciously channeled onto ridiculous little things…. at which point I frequently sigh at how absolutely anal retentive I have become. 😐

Whose stupid fucking idea was this?

Posted on June 30, 2008 by borysSNORC

Since there was a flurry of activity leading up to GNW when it was all over there was a day or two of ‘hmmm … what do I do now?’ and for some strange reason that resulted in a rifling through my embroidery box to see what sort of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) I might have laying about as this would be the perfect time to finally get in and finish something.

At which point I picked up this –

I started this little cross stitch in 1998 about a year or so after I met Mr K. I remember working on it when I was in the RBH in about Jan 1999 and I remember being well into it at that stage. It has been picked up off and on over the last decade (yes… decade! :S) or so and every time I return to it, I ask myself the same question – WHAT ON EARTH WAS I THINKING!?!?!?!!

It is worked from a commercial pattern (based on or inspired by one of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Musee de Moyen Age in Cluny Paris) on 32 count linen with a single thread of cotton floss over a single thread on the linen… now if you don’t know anything about embroidery then you won’t understand how ridiculously tiny and fine that is. If you do know anything about embroidery… you’ll be laughing your arse off about now thinking Borys is a mad woman and deserves every little bit of hell that it’s giving her. 😐

And I think it’s literally making me go blind! I am experiencing very tangible visual perception anomalies if I come to the PC and try and look at my monitors as I have just done now. Stuff appears to be swimming in front of my vision… which I am sure isn’t good. I’ve only got the background to finish and some fiddly finishing bits but now I’m in full ‘Grrr…must finish fucking project’ mode so I can’t put the damn thing down until it’s done.

At which point I guess I’ll be saying – well that was a long drawn out and exhaustive exercise in futility… what am I going to do with it now?

A messy desk is a sign of a creative mind….

Posted on June 4, 2008 by borysSNORC

Desktops covered in icons (useful, disused or otherwise) make me twitch.
They’re always lurking in the background and even though you can’t always see them…. you’re aware of their inherently malignant presence. They hide underneath the programs you have running like insidious little dust bunnies that hide under your bed and whose sole purpose is to evade the vacuum cleaner and multiply when you’re not looking.

I hate them. They remind me that I’m less organized than I should want to be…. and they seem to reflect the state of my house. If the house is untidy my desktop tends to likewise be in disarray. Why is it so?

And why can’t I just leave them there? Multiplying to their heart’s content? In truth they’re not maliciously causing any tangible or particular injury to myself or others. They’ve even been known to be useful from time to time… and yet I despise them so completely I’m constantly compelled to cull. And it’s not usually because I’m finished with them, but rather because I can’t stand seeing the detestable digital detritus scattered all over the desktop!

It’s normally right about when they start to overrun “Rip-My-Still-Beating-Heart-Out-Of-My-Chest” Bear is when I start to really twitch.. which of course leads to randomly deleting the little fuckers or at the very least moving the unholy little bastards off the desktop in order to keep my sanity.

If the day ever comes when they start to invade my second monitor and “It-Wasn’t-Me-The-Cat-Spontaneously-Combusted” Bear seems like he too might be overcome.. well… that’ll be the day they send for the little men in their white coats to come and take me away.

Perhaps this quantifiable manifestation of my latent OCD tendencies is something I need to devote some time to with one of the multitude of allied health professionals who are supposedly monitoring my mental well being…

And while we’re at it, perhaps we might need to examine the rationale behind my having saved the image below to my aforementioned ‘creative’ desktop…. 😐

Clutter-fuck.

Posted on April 23, 2008 by borysSNORC

What is it with shrinks and their dogs? I went to a TrickCyclist today who works from the downstairs of her house and there was a huge smelly black labrador laying under her desk. Not only was there a dog under her desk, but her ‘office’ and I use the term loosely seemed to double as a media room with a couch and big screen TV and also served purpose as home gym with treadmill, exercise bike and weight bench too. There were Schmackos on her desk and stuff piled on every available surface. A rack of Yoga DVDs and home made art works hanging on the walls. The whole room smelled like wet dog and there was knick knacks and ornaments all over the place. There was so much to look at in the room that I found it hard to concentrate on what the TrickCyclist was saying.

If a messy desk is supposedly a sign of a creative mind then this woman must have been Pieter Breugel in a former life. I’ve never seen so much junk ad clutter in one place. There were piles of National Geographic in one corner, manilla folders full of various papers all stacked high in another, two ceramic candelabra on a sideboard (one intact and one broken), old maps of Vietnam on the back of the door, a well used yellow pages holding up a broken coffee table leg, a couch that was covered in rugs that were covered in cat hair, a fish tank so grotty you couldn’t see the fish, old photos c1920ish in frames on the TV cabinet, a bookcase crammed full with psychology texts and yoga and relaxation books, turkish style rugs on the floor that were covered in stains and even when Digger the labrador got up and left from under the desk… the wet dog smell remained.

But in spite of all this clutter that made me feel dreadfully uncomfortable… the one thing that kept disturbingly drawing my eye and convinced me that there was something seriously ‘wrong’ with this woman was the copy of The Russian Ark that was on top of her DVD shelf.

Why on earth would ANYONE buy that movie?
.

Likitchu…

Posted on April 14, 2008 by borysSNORC

The Small Child seems to have inherited his mothers slightly obsessive compulsive tendencies. I like to think of it as ‘focused and determined’ … but in truth it’s probably a mild case of undiagnosed OCD. I have a habit of getting hold of a thing/concept/desire or whatever and once it’s in my head as something I want to do/create/have it’s become all that I can think about.

I’m pretty sure this makes me an incessantly nagging daughter/sister/wife/mother but I’m not sure that there’s anything that can be done about it and to be frank, I not sure I want to do away with that particular character trait (flaw?) in myself or in the Small Child. The single mindedness of purpose can serve you well when it comes to achieving what you want or need in this world, and yet I know it can be really humbling when you’ve set yourself targets that are outside your sphere of control … like IVF.

Shrug… either way, he’s got it too and it shows in the way his becomes fixated on things and then his fixations hop about. First we were into Bob the Builder, then it was Spiderman all the way, for a bit there it was Transformers that topped his obsessions and then after that was Ninja Turtles.

But his newest obsession seems to be Pokemon (they always remind me of Ling Ling from Drawn Together) and I’m aware that the objects of his desire hops about according to whatever his little friends are into and I think he’s going to unfortunately want to keep up with the Jones’ for way too much of his young life….

Bee count:

64 down …90 to go.