Time Passes and The Circle Turns

Things still havn't really gotten going. I don't think they are going to either. I think this one will sort of stay as it is before fading away and that will be it for this month. Being fat really does affect your hormones and I know that mine have been affected. Maybe this is my body making progress towards getting back to normal, who knows. Hopefully as I get thinner and thinner my body will become as regular as clockwork with predictablity and stability and fewer hiccups.

My energy is fragile at the moment. I am happy as I wake and go off to work. I have enough energy to see me through the first few hours but then things go downhill. I run out of energy. Suddenly I am sick of everyone, grouchy, tired and fed up. If I had my way, I would not go to work on such days. I would spend them mostly alone, doing soft things at a speed suited to me. I wouldn't become overtaxed.

Last night on the way home I decided to throw the diet out the window. I bought a trashy box, some bath treats, lots of crisps and chocolate and some new brushes. I got in the bath and stayed there for four hours with my purchases (except the brushes). While I am going to stick to a post a day, i am no longer going to insist I boot up the laptop at such times...

The weather is stunning. definitely cool, with the mornings shrouded in thin mists. The skies are pastel and soft, blurred round the edges. By lunch everything feels pleasantly warm but the nights are cold. Perfect Autumn weather. Things are changing but still lovely.

I have decided that I need gloves for work. Not yet but I find that even if I am warm, cool drafts can make my joints ache. I will need to take care of my wrists and hands at work. I can't use full gloves at work because I handle plastics that get staticy and stick to me but I have seen lovely tubes which go up the arm and over the wrist with a hole for the thumb. This leaves all the fingers free to work but keeps a lot covered and warm. I think I might visit etsy...

Maybe I should invest in wooly tubes for my ankles and knees to wear under my jeans to make sure those joints stay nice and toasty as well?

Oh I lost 2 pounds this week. I wasn't so very chuffed with this because it is exactly what I gained the week before and because I was feeling grumpy and rough.

Mothballs

Not much of a post tonight. I have to go to Fat Fighters and I feel rough as rats.

My moontime still hasn't gotten going. I don't why this happens sometimes but I get a period of time when everything is saying I am ready, even a little light flow/spotting but my heavy beginning of my period just won't materialise. Until it does I will feel awful. The longer it takes the more yucky I will feel.

I wish I could just crawl in the bath and then off to bed.

I made my porridge and smoothie as usual this morning but I just couldn't face eating them. I think I had one mouthful. The chocolate and sugar cravings were very strong and I gave in. It hasn't been a red or a green day but a brown day.

I just want it to start! What is my body waiting for? The New Moon?

I am actually a New Moon person. I like this time best in the month. I think the darker more mysterious side of the Goddess is the one for me and had decided this before I realised that that tends to be my moontime. Coincidence? I am not a bright shiny person much of the time, although I have my moments. I like to step back and think more and I have been known to brood a little. Anyway time to go see if I have lost or gained. *glower*

The Colour Red

So much seems to have happened at work today but i can't really talk about it. The bizarre thing is that I didn't really care. Well i did, a little bit, but it just didn't impact on my happiness. The sun was shining, I was feeling good and nothing was going to take the pleasure of the day away from me. Certainly not the world falling apart from people I don't know or like and the knock on effects it might have on others. People have to take responsibility for the results of their own actions. I played no part in any of it.

So let's talk about hormones. Mine seem to be changing. I guess this is to be expected. Being obese has meant my hormones are a little less powerful and predictable. Last Friday I found myself in possession of a lot of annoyed energy. so I went and employed this energy usefully in a working fashion.

I think I am about to start my period. Last month it was about this time, just after the waning moon. Normally I retain water and get really heavy for about the week before and feel even more sluggish than normal. I normally get very weepy a couple of days beforehand. I put on weight last week, I havn't been feeling quite as good as I did a week or so ago (but still pretty good).

So is all that aggressive energy thing my new emotional symptom of impending hormonality? I liked feeling like that. I didn't have to stay in the office and be grumpy with people, I was able to use that energy for positive things and that felt good. It feels good to feel up to using my body a little more. And I work somewhere where there is the opportunity to.

I am not convinced that you really need to know all this... Everytime I get to this point I find myself thinking about diva cups and cloth pads. I want to use them. I want to do it, to change, to be more environmentally friendly and more skin friendly too. I need to take the plunge and just do it. I guess sometimes the thought of trying new things can be a little daunting. What if it goes wrong and I find myself with a leaking divacup at work? How long can you wear cloth pads for, do you use them just like other pads?

Did anybody else get the eek feeling before changing?

In The Garden

The garden has a small museum which I didn't stay to look at for long. I have looked around before and the only thing I stopped to really look at were the quotes written above the displays. It seems Barbara loved Cornwall for it's pagan landscape and St Ives for the sense of community it gave her with other artists.

Upstairs some of her smaller creations are on display along with a glass jug and a huge quartz crystal which look in need of a good scrub. And then outside!
The garden isn't that big and is in the middle of a busy town but for the most part it is quiet inside. People are driven to talk in hushed tones. There is a meditative feel to it. A small green oasis...
The garden itself is lush and green but then being blessed with Cornwall's warmth and rain and St Ives sheltered position, this isn't surprising. A path snakes all the way round the outside of the garden and a tiny network of two or three paths snakes across the middle. Along one long side is a high wall against which sits her workshops and a conservatory. Where this wall meets the bottom of the garden is her house which was not particularly big. The bottom of the garden is also walled with a seating area that acts as suntrap and a little summer house containing a bed. The other walls are lower and topped with vegetation.

So it really, really isn't very big!
And everywhere, of course, there are sculptures. Some bronze. Some stone. Some sit huge within the garden and can be seen from several points. Others nestle in a corner or an alcove and you suddenly find yourself there, on top of them, as they appear from nowhere.

They don't compete with the plants. They all sit there together in harmony. The sculptures don't even compete with each other. And they certainly don't just look good from one angle...

Her complex geometrical shapes appeal to me. They are not sharp and angular in the main, they are fantastically curved. The garden has a lovely deep energy to it. It feels feminine. It feels healing. It is very calm and grounding. I can imagine though, that Barbara bought the garden alive when she was in it. I suspect the energy of the garden changed with her moods.

I lingered in several spots, soaking it all up....
I learnt that although she died in a fire, caused by a cigarette she dropped when she fell asleep after drinking a little whiskey, that it wasn't the fire that killed her but the fumes from the plastics she she worked with to coat some of her works. The dirty jug and crystal have never been cleaned from the fire. The calendar still sits on the date that she died. Her clothes sit on the back of the big door in her workshop. Unfinished works sit around, in progress. Fresh lumps of granite lie, awaiting her touch. It as if she might return any moment, as if she had just gone for a snooze. The careful work of conservationists keeps it just so, stuck in a bubble of time.

The Root of Woman

This post has accumulated slowly and simmered a little inside my head....

***

At work I am in a mostly male environment, however there is a little cluster of ladies of which I am a part. Not surprisingly there is sometimes a little banter. One term which has come up a few times over the last few months is witch. The connotation is always female, sometimes ugly, or old as well. Sometimes the witches are found in groups. They tend to be of some irritation to the men folk around... They don't know I am a witch.

***

As part of my aim to watch half of the best 250 films, I recorded and watched Rosemary's Baby. I knew nothing about the film before I watched it and so was a little surprised by what I found.

Obviously I was a little incensed by the way they confuse and muddle satanism and witches. The people in the film are obviously satanists. I have never met a satanist and I am not sure I would be overly fond of them if I did. but they are very different from witches, very, very.

As I watched the film it was increasing obvious that this was a film about the evils of separating a woman from her womanhood. Defiling a woman. Separating her from family and friends. Not allowing her contact with other women. Separating her from the world and her womanhood, taking away all her power.

So much insight and it just didn't sit right that a film that got so much right about what is (has / could) be done to women could be so wrong about witches. I think this 'mistake' was a sign of the times. A sign of what was acceptable.

The film may appear to be a horror about satanists but it is more than that - it is actually about the wrongs done to women.... At least I think so, what do you think?

I can't quite fathom the film, were they trying to highlight what is done to women or were they trying to cut women off from finding their sisters in witchiness?

***

It seems to me that the cultural associations of a witch are so much about putting women down. About not understanding her connection to her sisters, about making her conform, about making her a tool for the satisfaction of men, about taking her power, about making her a slave be it as wife or mother.

Men have taken this thing that is so much about feminine power and sisterhood and polluted it to stop women claiming it. I have claimed it but I don't publicly make that claim. I think my colleagues would be embarassed if they knew. I suspect it would also offend their feelings of male control and power.

***

And they do have feelings of male superiority, they just disguise them most of the time. Current situations at work have exposed, slightly, to me anyway, one colleagues difficulty in accepting women above him. He has a lady boss right now but now has the opportunity to stay in his job with a new boss, parallel to his old team or to become the boss of that parallel team, equal to his old lady boss.

He knows I was capable of applying for the boss job and that I didn't. I might even have stood a better chance of getting it than he does, who knows. I certainly am more academic and have way more qualifications. His attitude to me has subtly changed since this job was advertised. It has definitely changed towards our boss. i don't like it. I also don't entirely like what this reveals about this otherwise lovely chap....

Women are not equal. men still put us down. We have claimed equality on their terms. We need to claim equality of our own. The right to be women. The right to connect with our power. is this the next revolution in feminism?

Mud, Glorious Mud

WARNING THIS POST IS FOR WOMEN ONLY!!!

If You are a bloke reading this I don't ever want to know. There are to be no smirks, no little references nothing... I am sure there will be a few things that would make a smutty little schoolboy laugh... Don't read this if you are prudish either!

As some of you may know I recently was inspired to buy some dead sea mud to slaver on my body to have some nice fun time with my inner child. Today was the day and earlier was the hour.

I took my sachets of mud to the bathroom and opened the first one to discover it had settled a little in the packet and I was loosing water. No matter. Down the legs it went.... It took two packets to cover all of me, except my head and the bits of my back I couldn't get to.

It smelt anoxic, think that dark black mud you find underneath that is always wet and never gets any air, marsh mud. It has a different set of chemical reactions because of the lack of air that give it a very distinctive smell. Probably good I have hardly any sense of smell, it really doesn't bother me at all.

So gooey clay, everywhere, and yes I do mean everywhere. Once I put it on, I played with it for a while, enjoying the sensation of it on my skin, running through my fingers, drawing spirals on my breasts. Touching my sin and caressing myself. Now I know some of you might be having a titter some time about now, thinking oh aye, but, you see, it just wasn't like that, not one bit. Why does touch have to be about sex? Why does pleasure have to be sexual? I was playing and stroking my skin and enjoying it, why does that have to sound smutty?

My masseuse often says that ouch is so important and we don't touch ourselves enough. We don't spend time looking after the skin we are in. I don't mean slathering it in potions and lotions, but spending time on it. Look at monkeys, they sit there and groom, most of the time they are not even dirty, it has a social meaning to it as well as personal welfare.

I am fat and I try not to spend too much time looking at my body. I try not to notice it a lot of the time, if I can possibly help it and I certainly do not want to look at the clothes I wear which a lot of the time are not things I would ever choose to wear if I had all the choice in the world. How much time do I spend letting my body know I love it and I appreciate the skin I am in, not much.

I lay in the bath and massages myself. I particularly enjoyed massaging my feet, it felt lovely squidging the mud between my toes. I filled it up with water after a while and I sat in my little muddy pool of water. I played with the mud as it dried, peeling it off, turning into that lovely liquid mud that oozes between the fingers. Letting it dry again. Turning my belly button into a mud hole.

It was glorious, innocent play and right now my skin knows that I love it and loving being in it. It also feels very, very soft.....

Working Women....

Tonight I found myself home alone with nothing on our Sky+ box that I wanted to watch that F didn't want to watch too. So I looked to see what was on and came across a series entitled 'The Problem with Working Women'.

Oh my! So much in there kind of fits with what I am thinking and feeling! And with what friends of mine are thinking and feeling out there in blogland..... I can't say as I agreed with everything on the programme but it did explore some of the issues very well and there is more to come....

Some time ago a psychological test was done on young boys and girls. Each child was timed running by themself and then timed running with someone of a similar speed to themselves. The test showed that boys ran quicker when they had competition but the girls ran slower. On the programme they repeated this experiment and found little difference between the sexes. It seems nurture was the reason for the difference because the brain has a plasticity and adapts to the attitudes it is exposed to. Sexual difference in attitudes are largely caused by society and the differences that there are, are not as large as we might have previously believed....

Successful women make a choice. 25% of women with degrees will be childless on their 40th birthday. Women these days often can not afford not to work once they have children. They are the ones which are expected to work flexibly in order to support their family, the ones who sacrifice promotion. A male surgeon featured on the programme had five children but the female surgeon they spoke to had none and was single in her 30s.

In fact sexism is still rife, despite the efforts of the feminists. Women generally don't work on building sites. Women working as investment bankers may be excluded from meetings because they take place in strip clubs or asked to schmooze clients. Men don't often get to work as midwives...

One pioneering feminist said that she had gotten it a little wrong. The women she sees these days are a whole generation of very, very tired women. How sad is that? and how true.... In order to get freedom in the work place they have to juggle far more balls....

I think the programme missed one thing though... It should be a choice, to work or not to work and there is no reason why it shouldn't be the man who is the main carer, who has flexible working to look after the children, who sacrifices their career. But I have known men who when they did become the main carer after being made redundant, just couldn't cope - not because they weren't up to it but because society made them feel like failures for it and non-masculine....

Not all men are alpha males however. An alpha male and an alpha female both trying to work and raise a family is a recipe for disaster it seems... but a working alpha female and a beta male at home? why not.... Times need to carry on changing.... I want to be able to afford to be a stay at home Mum... Another scary stat for you - the more time children spend int he care of non-family members before the age of five, the more aggressive and the less discipline they have in later years... If I can't be at home, then I want F to be home....