No, I don't friends-lock my entries - what you see here is all there is to see (except for three locked entries containing out-of-date contact info). 

There is not enough money in the world to come up with an amount even approaching what you'd need to pay me to make me give even the tiniest shit about ( DOCTOR WHO SPOILERSCollapse ).

But, I am ( more DW spoilers, sweetie!Collapse )with River Song.  ( spoily spoily spoilyCollapse )

So this entry started life as a comment on someone's blog, but then I pulled it because it's a pregnant woman's blog and I was going to disagree with her about what is turning out to be a hot-button topic and that seems unfair on the knocked-up chick, who probably doesn't need any more stress in her life right now.

But seriously, there were dozens of women on this blog post all sharing their complex and convoluted ways of keeping their pubic hair "under control" during pregnancy.  And by "under control" they mean "non-existent".  And...just...wow.  I don't get it.  I like my Map of Tasmania, and my underarm hair, and my leg hair.  I like the evidence that I am an adult woman who has gone through puberty, and getting rid of my hair makes me feel like a little girl.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't shave/wax/laser/etc if you want to.  I like be au natural, but everyone's mileage varies.  I just worry that so many women I know seem to be going to all this expense and trouble and pain all for someone else - a partner, society, even "because my beauty therapist will be ashamed of me otherwise".

I had a similar conversation with my 14-year-old cousin last summer.  She was gobsmacked at my hairy armpits.  Her exact words were "But we have to shave our armpits!" and when I asked her "Really?  Why?  Says who?"....she didn't have an answer.  I told her that of course she should shave if she wants to, but that I wanted her to think about why she feels she has to. 

I remember the lightbulb moment I had when I realised that I didn't have to shave.  That it's not the law, and that I did actually have a choice.  It was an awesome moment.  18 months later I have a) saved a fortune on razors, b) not once dripped blood from shaving cuts all over my nice new carpet, c) realised that Map/armpit/leg hair gets nice and soft and fluffy when it is left to grow out, and d) haven't had to deal with the disgusting and gross and painful shaving rashes that I used to get on my underarms no matter what and which had been the bane of my life for the last thirteen years.

I can't believe it took me so long to realise that shaving was something that I had a choice about doing.  I'd never before thought of myself as particularly socially conditioned, but that little lightbulb moment put paid to that.

I might go to back to shaving one day.  But I might not.  Either is fine for me, and either is fine for you.  Do what you want, girls, and do what makes you happy!

For Christmas, I got:

• Tim Minchin's "Ready For This" DVD
• "In The Loop" DVD
• "Empire Records" DVD
• Hairdryer & straighteners
• A Slanket
• A puzzle box
• An Adipose stress-toy
• A Magic Tree
• A jewellery box
• Ladybug earphones
• A backpack
• Body butter
• Earrings
• Glitter eyeliner

I love them all.

You know how sometimes you just want to shake someone and scream at them and hurt them like they've hurt you, to try and get what you mean across and make them understand something that seems so simple to you but they just don't or can't or won't get it? 

But you can't do that, because that's not the way adults deal with things and you know it wouldn't help anyway but by god it would make you feel better.  So you shut yourself away from them because even talking to them or thinking about them hurts, but then not talking to them or thinking about them hurts as well, and you're back to wanting to scream and scream and scream at them because you feel like they're wilfully just not getting it and you feel like you just hate them and hate them and hate them but you really don't even though sometimes you wish you could because wouldn't that just be easier? 

And this has been going on for years (a decade!) and you're just so very tired of it and you really feel like this should be the end, but you know it's not and it never will be, because that just isn't going to happen and you're so close to something and so close to it being right but it isn't right and never will be and that's no-one's fault, it's just the way it is, but you still want to scream and scream at the blood-curdling unfairness of it all and you wonder what in the world a normal, boring, unexceptional person like you ever did to deserve this?

You know that?  Yeah, well, that.

I know I don't post here much any more, but I am just too angry tonight for it to be encapsulated into 140 characters.

I was in a bar tonight and one of the guys I was with fell over, breaking his wrist and injuring his leg.  He hadn't been drinking, we'd only been there ten minutes.  He was in so much pain and white as a sheet, just lying on the ground and not really moving at all.  My sister and I are both First Aiders at our offices, so she went to help him while I called an ambulance and sent someone to get the bar's own First Aider.

The Duty Manager came over to me and was completely useless.  I'm at home now, and I still don't know if that bar actually had a First Aider.  But that's not what I'm (mostly) angry about.

What I'm angry about is that the manager point-blank refused to turn the music and TVs down.  I told him "I'm on the phone to the emergency services, trying to give them the information that the ambulance needs, but I can't hear them and they can't hear me, so can you turn the music and TVs off?"

His response?

"I can't turn them off, people are watching the football."

UNBELIEVABLE.  I asked him again and again, trying to get the point across that I COULDN'T HEAR WHAT THE EMERGENCY SERVICES WERE SAYING TO ME, but he wouldn't do it.  I just have no words for how awful that is.  And not only couldn't I hear the 999 people on the phone properly, but I had to shout back my answers - including exactly what his wrist looked like (turned around completely the wrong way) and of course the poor guy heard every word.

SO ANGRY.  I am SO ANGRY.

And now I am off to research the owner of that bar, and possibly the Health & Safety Executive, and write a sternly-worded letter to them both.

Oh.

I was vaguely wandering around livejournal in the way that, after a long absence, you might wander around the house that you grew up in.  Picking up old photos, spending time looking intently at things that were so banal as to be invisible to you back then, feeling ghosts of emotions, smiling, remembering the person who you were back then.

Then I got kicked in the guts by stumbling across the journal of a friend who died last month.  We'd fallen slightly out of touch; we were Facebook-friends, commenting briefly on each other's photos and "liking" each other's status updates.  But we were school friends, old friends, friends for the past fifteen years.  Now she's dead, and I wandered back through her journal, and I cried and cried and cried.

The. Entire. TFL. Network. Is. Down. Overground, underground, Routemasters on bits of string...everything, absolutely everything: no TFL, TFL all broken...Hello, TFL? Anyone there? No! Because the TFL network isn't working!

Ooh. Shiny and new!