Epiphany!

People who are veterans of the recent spate (I'm talking the last 9 years or so) of Saturday Night Entertainment will recognise the following sayings....

'The song was too big for you!'
'You totally owned the stage!!'
'You were out of your comfort zone!'
'You were born to be a singer/performer!'
'You deserve to be on that stage!'



Please note - the excess exclamation marks are very much intentional. Each of these statements MUST BE SAID IN A STATE OF EXTREME EXCITMENT AS THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING THING TO HAVE HAPPENED SINCE THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN!!!!. Although I'm not crediting the judges with enough brains to know anything about the Berlin wall, miaoooowwww.

Ok, so I'm obviously talking about the X Factor and other such crappy 'reality' shows but, more to the point, I'm annoyed with MYSELF for actually watching. hmmmm.

I hate everything about it. So much so that I'm going to list those things for you...

The hideous and frankly abusive way in which contestants, some of whom I would venture to say are mentally unwell, are 'auditioned' and ridiculed for being, let's face it, embarrassing in their complete inability to sing.

The lonnnnnnnnng drawn out process whereby we all find out about the saaaaaad family secrets and stereotypical types. Staple examples; single parents, no money, dead siblings, bullying at school, too fat, too thin, interesting to look at (ugly) jack the lad, racist, thick as two short planks, posh boy trying to be rough etc etc etc..

Over produced numbers to cover up the lack of vocal talent

The predictablity, or worse, the fake pretence at unpredictability. Shock horror! So & So has been booted out!! National outcry in the Daily Mail!!

I could go on. You should read this book if you want to know what I mean:



I like to think (well I KNOW) that I am intelligent enough to see through all the crap and know full well that the whole thing is one big 'fix' (I don't go as far as saying the votes are fixed, but pretty much everything else is). I also think that I am intelligent enough to therefore, hmmm, I don't know, NOT WATCH??? but no, no, no, no, no. I watch it, and I hate it, but I can't not. Am I addicted?!!! Can I give it up?! Is it like alcohol? I love it because it makes me feel good momentarily but ultimately it makes me dislike myself on a very basic and base level. hmm, sounds familiar.

This is how my Sunday evenings go at the moment:

Sit down to catch up with recorded stuff from over the weekend; Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, to be specific.

Start with Strictly - watch the whole episode (approx 2 hours worth) in about 30 minutes - fast forwarding through all the crap and irrelevance and literally just watching each dance and the following judge comments.

Watch the Strictly results show - over an hour's programme in about 5 minutes - just the actual result please!!

Followed by the X Factor, which in it's crapness is FAR FAR in advance of Strictly. Hours worth of telly reduced to; singing, judge comments, ff and move on to the next. None of the abovementioned things which I HATE hate hate hate hate hate hate hate....

Then, finally, I'll watch the X Factor results. All over in about 5 minutes in my world. Not interested in the guests, the flashbacks, the interviews, the tears, the 'tension'.

So why do I do it? My epiphany happened tonight. I realised that I am actually making myself miserable by watching these programmes. I annoy myself. I get frustrated. It doesn't make me a better person, it makes me a worse person. Just like white wine, I suppose.

Why the stress with the Wine??

And actually, for once, I don't mean drinking too much of it!!



I think it's safe to say that I am a bit of a worrier. However I'm a bit of a paradox (I think that's the best description) because if you were to ask my mum, best friend or boyfriend they would say that 'Stress' and 'Anxiety' both figure quite highly in my life. Another friend who I have known for a very long time but who probably doesn't know me quite so well said of me the other day 'you never let anything bother you, you're the most laid back person I know!'

Now this made me laugh - in some ways she is absolutely correct, and in some ways she couldn't be further from the truth. Two of the things you are most likely to hear me say are:

"I've got sooooo much to do!!! Arrrrrrrrghh!! Not enough time!"

and....

"It'll all be fine - we'll play it by ear.........."

So I confuse myself sometimes, as you can imagine.

Anyway, I'm digressing a bit, but the point is that I've been making my own wine recently; some of my favourites so far:

Strawberry & Apple
Rose Petal
Elderberry
Elderflower

and some on the go at the moment; natty little vintages of:

Plum and Damson
Greengage and Plum

This is where the anomalies come in. I find it incredibly satisfying to see the end result of something which I have made quite literally from start to finish. I picked the elderberries, I nurtured the fermenting process, I carefully racked and finished and bottled everything. (And then it sits looking pretty on the shelf because, in reality, it doesn't taste all that great but hey, that's beside the point....)

But this time, it's different. Why? Because I'm making wine from grapes, which have been nurtured by a friend who has entrusted me to make lovely wine from them. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!! Suddenly all this pressure!!

So this is how it goes - you basically put fruit in water with sugar and yeast. It ferments (bubbles) in a tub for a week or so. Then you strain out all of the stalks/peel etc (my kitchen looked like I had massacred a few people in it after I did the elderberries) filter the liquid into a demijohn (big glass bottle) with an airlock. Now the most satisfying part of the process is when over the next few weeks the wine continues to ferment, causing a relaxing rythmic'bloop bloop' as the air is pushed through the airlock. Lovely.

So what caused the panic this week? Well after the bubbling tub was transferred to the demi johns and it bubbled fiercely for a few hours.... nothing. Bubbles stopped! Nothing! Flat unfermented wine!

Now ordinarily I would think - what the hey - it's only a bit of fruit I've picked from the hedgerows along with some water and sugar. If it doesn't work, what have I lost? Nothing! This time with the newly introduced element of the 'friend' or 'client' sitting on my shoulder (in my mind) shouting 'MAKE THE WINE FERMENT!!! COME ON!!! DO SOMETHING!! DON'T SLEEP AT NIGHT! OH NO, WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND WORRY THAT THE WINE ISN'T BUBBLING!! GO ON!!'

hmmmmm. In reality what I did was take some bubbling wine just about to go into a demi john, introduced it to the flat stuff, which is now bubbling away nicely. What I don't understand is the TOTALLY DISPROPORTIONATE panic I felt, the sinking feeling, the wringing hands when I first checked and saw a distinct lack of bubbles.

It's all bubbling away nicely now, you'll no doubt be glad to hear. But I still sneak up into the bedroom every so often and check it out..............

To my 'other half'?

I had my hair coloured today - you were actually there in the building so you can't possibly claim that you didn't know. A 'your hair looks good' would have been nice. If you genuinely didn't notice or care then; well I'm not sure if that's better or worse. How difficult could it be to say it?

I am paranoid/sensitive/hard work I know. But honestly? If you find me as unattractive/tedious/worthless as I think you do, then really just let me know and get it over with quickly. Don't let it drag on for a while and then put me through some hideous break up which I could REALLY do without. Or perhaps if you do really love me and want to be with me then perhaps you could sometimes, oh, I don't know, SAY SO???!!!

I've got lots of friends who I would describe as 'high maintenance'. By which I mean they are, by my standards, unreasonably demanding of their boyfriends/husbands. I always prided myself on being the antithesis of this; easygoing, non demanding. Perhaps I am so low in self esteem that I thought that no-one would want me if I dared to actually 'demand' or 'require' something.

Well, I've finally decided that I'm not going to feel like this any more. So my question today is honestly, really, am I just being a cow? If you've been in a long term relationship with someone for 4 years during which you've bought a house and had a child with them, would it REALLY be too much to ask to be told that you are lovely once in a while? And if you aren't told that, would it be unreasonable to presume that you aren't, and that your 'other half' is taking you for granted?

Answers on a postcard.............

Names have been changed to protect the annoying.......

Well I've had one hell of an annoying evening. Although the chances of the person I'm talking about ever stumbling across this blog and reading it, I will make an effort not to be too specific.

I have just about had enough of a particular person who has a history of winding me up with the following traits:

Having a very specific idea of what they want to happen *in their head*
Not coherently sharing said ideas with the rest of us
Silently brooding in the background whilst we attempt to recreate the 'vision'
Eventually erupting in a petulant display of 'NO NO NO!! It's supposed to be like thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis'

This coupled with a sulky and childish habit of coming out with the classic 'well we'll just do it your way then, my way obviously isn't good enough' (or words to that effect).

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Oh, and in case I forget why I started this blog (or if anyone is still interested) I'm still sneezing regularly! And completed this online today:

http://www.synesthete.org/

which officially informs me that I am a Synaesthete. Which in a strange sort of way makes me proud :-)

Something has to change.....

and I think it's got to be me :-(

So this is my life at the moment. I've lost baby weight after LL was born, and I'm trying to keep it off. I'm also juggling a house and various work/hobbies. I love wine and I love food.



I love a glass of wine to relieve the stress, and then another, then another.......
I can either spend a week eating ultra healthily and not drinking, or a week eating and drinking what the hell I want, and never the twain shall meet.

WHY OH WHY can't I just eat and be average like a normal person??!!!!

So it was Monday morning which made me think of the title for this post. My weekends consist of getting to about 3pm and having a nice relaxing glass of wine. The problem is that I can't quite put my finger on the fine line between 'nice relaxing glass of wine at the weekends' and 'slightly too much and falling asleep on the sofa by the evening'. Don't get me wrong - I've got two young children and don't loll about the house hopelessly drunk and incapable; but by the time they've gone to bed I - how shall I put it? - well I wouldn't get behind the wheel of a car.

I like to think that, while it's not right, I'm not the only parent who does this, and would go so far as to say I'm probably not in the minority. But my general state of being at the moment is waking up in the morning in a bit of a panic, with a general aura of unease around me; "I didn't quite achieve what I should have yesterday because I was catching up on old episodes of Miss Marple with a cold glass of white" or "well there's no way I'm getting on the scales this morning after my roast dinner/chocolate/wine/crisps binge yesterday".

So I suppose the question is; do I just say 'sod it, life's too short' or do I say 'I feel so much better the morning after a day of eating healthily and having one small glass of wine (even though I find those sort of days interminably dull!!).

As I write, I'm already looking forward to my first crisp, cold glass of white straight out of the fridge which I will drink whilst listening to TS telling me about his day and to LL making car noises (his new favourite noise). And I really have no desire to be 'average', maybe just a little bit more sober........

A womb with a view?

So I have a theory that I remember some sort of horrendous sneezing happening whilst I was in the womb, which is why I have such an issue with it now. So that started me wondering if 'fetal memory' exists? It seems clear from just a quick search online that it does, in that a fetus can remember things whilst in the womb (best explained here):

The new study tested how fetuses in nearly 100 pregnant women responded to a specific stimulus, in this case, a "vibroacoustic stimulation," which is a very low sound that makes a vibration. The researchers observed the reaction using an ultrasound. When the fetus first receives the stimulation, it is startled. But after repeated trials of the same stimulation, 30 seconds apart, the fetus gets used to the sound and doesn't react.

"A normal fetus, of about 30 or 32 or 34 weeks, would stop responding after [about] 13 or 14 stimuli," said Nijhuis.

This lessened response to a repeated stimulus is called habituation, a process that both humans and animals are known to experience. For example, you might become habituated to the sound of your heater at nighttime, hearing it at first, but growing used to the noise after a while and falling asleep, Nijhuis explained.

But this doesn't really cover what I'm thinking - that something which happened outside of my mum whilst she was pregnant with me had a long lasting affect on me which is still occurring now (I'm 37 - eeeek!!). So far Scientology seems to offer the only reference I can find which relates to my theory; something called 'Dianetics': (following quotes from http://askthescientologist.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html)

Part of the Dianetic theory is that a person's mental or physical problems are caused by "chains" of related, harmful events. If a "preclear" (person getting Dianetic therapy) has, let's say, trouble hearing, it will be found, according to Hubbard, that there is a chain of harmful incidents related to his ears or hearing. As part of Hubbard's theory, this "chain" is held in place by one "basic" incident: the earliest incident related to ears/hearing. Once that basic incident was relieved, the person's hearing would be recovered.

I'm not saying this is true, just that's the theory. I bring up the theory because of this: As part of Dianetic therapy, the auditor keeps asking for an "earlier, similar incident" until they get to this basic incident.

With the idea that we only live once, the search for "earlier, similar" would often end up with "memories" from the womb. There is quite a bit from Hubbard about prenatal memories of harmful incidents.

And then a number of preclears, upon being asked for an "earlier, similar incident" started "recovering memories" from before this life.

After this it wanders into all sorts of stuff about implanting yourself in a new body:

Hubbard's explanation of the life-death-birth cycle goes roughly like this: Everyone is a thetan. Scientologist or wog, everyone is a thetan, inhabiting a body. As part of arriving on this planet, almost all the people here (the thetans), have been programmed to "report to the implant station" when they die.

When and where did this programming occur? Primarily, that was the OT III "Xenu" incident, 75 million years ago.

So, when anyone dies, they immediately "report to the implant station" for a refresh of their programming.

Hubbard claimed that there were implant stations on the far side of the moon and on Mars. I don't recall him ever saying Venus had an implant station (just trains, apparently).

The implant stations are all automatic, no people there. The thetans receive a refresh of their programming ("implanting") and then are given orders to "go pick up a new body on Earth".

So the thetan just goes to Earth and picks up a body.

Exactly when they inhabit the baby body is not set. They might inhabit the body before or after birth, but they will hover nearby in any case. Thetans will fight each other for a body, since there are more thetans than bodies.

Some thetans will take an adult body that is in a coma or has been seriously injured which, Hubbard said, explained amnesia and drastic personality changes at those times.

That's the dogma, according to Hubbard, as near as I can recall. I may have missed a few minor details.

But I'm not about to start discussing that!!! woooooooah there Nellie.........

So I haven't really answered my question. Is it possible that something happened to leave me with an irrational lifelong weirdness about sneezing whilst I was in the womb? Or I suppose at any time of my life? I did go to a hypnotist once to see if I could find out but that's another story for another post.........

In the words of Homer Simpson....

Can't talk, eating......



Which is pretty much what I've been doing for the past week or so. Eating and drinking like a crazed monster. It seems to have stopped now and I'm back to normal, but with tight trousers :-(

If anyone has followed this far and is interested, the sneezing continues apace, with about 6 or 7 a day. Yesterday was filled with what I like to call proper sneezing which possibly foretells a cold or some such annoyance. Blaaaah.

Life has been busy since I posted last:

A new bed
An unused voucher
Non-shopping for toiletries
A funeral
A funny story about a Stannah Stairlift (see funeral)
An email to an ex (no response - waiting patiently)
A Pirate Pantomime
2 delightful little boys
A decision about a friend (yet to be acted upon)

to name but a few of the things which have been filling up my time as well as the usual humdrummmmm of the week.

The New Bed is, and I'm not exaggerating, quite possibly the most exciting thing to happen to me since my youngest son was born. It's been an ongoing project born out of the arrival of the aforementioned son and the fact that all 4 of us (Boyfriend (BF) Top Son (TS) Youngest Son (LL) and Me) don't all fit into the previously fine double bed. In the mornings I like to lounge with my boys, and being pushed out by the youngest ones (not to mention BF in the middle of the night) just doesn't cut it.

I won't bore you with the long and tedious details but the long and short of it is that for the past 3 weeks we've been sleeping on a double mattress, placed like a foam island on a superking bed. A foot of space surrounded us, slats primed for getting little feet stuck and for books to fall through. On Sunday night I slipped into what I would describe as Bed Heaven. Plush superking mattress, clean cotton sheets, large plump pillows (and the obligatory glass of wine). In the morning my patience was finally rewarded when all 4 of us cosied up with tea, bottles of milk and a stuffed cat, and wallowed in the enormousness which is The New Bed. That's not me in the pic by the way :-)



Hasn't stopped me sneezing, so I guess I wasn't allergic to the old one.......

ha ha, I've just found this!!

http://www.sneezefetishforum.org/forums/index.php?act=idx

So it seems that quite a few people sneeze regularly on a daily basis; I'm not alone. So now I ought to go back to one of my original questions which is, why have I only recently started doing it?

That's for another day - sorry being lazy.

Proustian Moment!!

That's the term I was looking for!! A colleague of mine was more successful in her googling than I was, and finally found the word to describe what I've been experiencing.

Here's the lowdown:

Involuntary memory is a conception of human memory in which cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. Its binary opposite, voluntary memory, is a deliberate effort to recall the past. The term was coined by French author Marcel Proust. From this philosophical root, involuntary memory has become a part of modern psychology.

Although it was great to finally remember the name of the phenomenon, I'm not sure it's strictly accurate to describe me, as in my extensive research (ok, just Wikipedia) I haven't seen any mention of a specific thing (sound, noise, smell) repeatedly causing the same involuntary recall. More research to do methinks....

But just for my own enjoyment, I've included an image of Marcel Proust; he's a dapper chappy isn't he?

Anxious not to veer too far away from the sneezing but not to become obsessed with trying to count, I've been making a mental note generally of the sneezing and can conclude that it's somewhere between 5 and 10 times a day. This morning when I woke up at 4am (with a very slight hangover after too much red wine last night) I had a little sneezing fit of about 5. Sometimes when I'm a bit hungover I get a blocked up/runny nose - connection?)

Here's the Synesthesia Research I am hoping to become involved in - maybe I'll ask them about Proustian Moments?

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sackler/research/synaesthesia

MIA...

Ok so I'm a bit behind. A full on weekend which involved the death of a beloved friend's beloved father. Needless to say I wasn't intent on counting my sneezing but, this is a blog about that so here we go...

Haven't been counting but in the last 5 days since I posted I've been sneezing at least 9 or 10 times a day. So there, I'll try and be more accurate from now on....

Questions raised this week:

Does having children make you sneeze?

Does having a dog make you sneeze?

Does booze make you sneeze?

(I know the answer to one of these, obviously....) I drink a fair amount, but always have so I don't think that's a factor. I do, however, seem to have been sneezing since I gave birth to my second son in April 2010. I developed hay fever after giving birth to my first son in February 2003. I didn't used to like olives until I was pregnant with first son though - it does strange things to you.... (edited to add... repeating myself, sorry)

An interesting thing occured to me on Monday, which may or may not be relevant, but I think to do with some strain of the synesthaesia (more to follow, I keep promising then keep getting sidetracked). On playing Guitar Hero with my lovely boyfriend, I realised that whenever I start to play (start, not finish, it's only at the beginning) I am reminded of the time my ex-husband and I had a (rather rubbish) evening meal in a pub during a holiday in Cornwall in 2002. I think there's a name for this phenomenon but I don't know what it is (I want to say zeitgeist - I know it's wrong but it's something like that).

It's similar to when I was married to said ex, and on quite a number of occasions when we were 'getting intimate' as they say, I was reminded of the corner shop on the corner of the traffic lights near my Uncle's house in the south of England. Weird, yes? Explainable? Probably. Who to explain it? No idea!!

Or do I? I haven't told you about the synesthaesia yet. I'm hopefully going to be taking part in some research soon which may shed some light. Hoorah!!!

Is it the dog?

Well there were 5 more sneezes when I got home last night, and 5 more this morning after I'd taken the dog out for her morning woo (I'll leave you to work it out).

So, the question I'm asking myself today is why, after years of being a normal sneezer (a sneeze once every few days or weeks? Probably about normal?) to sneezing at least 4 times EVERY DAY. At least I think so, hence this blog, a super duper idea planted in my head as a joke by a friend; what better way to chart my sneezing life daily whilst getting the opportunity to clear my head of the rubbish that lies within, and exploring the reasons behind my sneezing hatred? Some friends describe my weird reaction as a 'phobia'. I disagreed, on the basis that a phobia is:

pho·bi·a (fb-)
n.
1. A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.
2. A strong fear, dislike, or aversion.

and I maintain that I'm not frightened of sneezing, just that it evokes a real need to get away from it, to make it stop, to hurt the person doing it to make them stop....which thinking about it is a

2. A strong fear, dislike, or aversion

hmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe I am sneeze phobic after all......



However does such a thing exist? A quick search of the good old tinternet revealed this:

There does not appear to be a scientific term to describe a fear of sneezing. Several sources refer to sternutaphobia as the correct term, but at least one other source claims this to be 'the fear of not being able to sneeze' or to 'bring a sneeze to fruition'. It is not confirmed that either definition is recognized by the medical community.

It's not everyone sneezing brings this out in me. Quite a few people can sneeze in front of me and just provoke a mild reaction, some the most severe reaction. It doesn't seem to relate to how well I know the person, the noise of sneeze, or the amount of times it happens; for example my Mum provokes the strongest reaction in me (quite loud sneezes quite similar to my own) but the same reaction can come about by a stranger sneezing quietly in a supermarket.

Anyhoo, I've digressed a bit. My musings this morning were prompted by wondering if I was allergic to our new dog (the daily sneezing possibly started since we've had her, which was also around the time my second son was born. I only developed hayfever after my first son was born, along with a love of olives) so that may be something to think about.

Said second son has just woken up, so I'm off :-)

Update: 10 more sneezes throughout the day.......

I've made it my mission....

.... to discover more about sneezing.

I'll try and explain why, and if you can follow to the end of this perhaps odd missive then you're more than welcome to follow me on my exciting journey of discover!! You'll soon learn to love my excessive use of the exclamation mark, possible CAPITAL LETTER overuse and almost certainly some rambling which will meander into subjects of no consequence....

Firstly, I LOVE SNEEZING!! Love it - feeling the tickle in the nose and the anticipation of the joy to come. The release of tension and, if I'm in the car or out of earshot of potential passers by, the primal noise which accompanies the all important moment.

But here comes my problem: I also HATE SNEEZING... when other people do it. And I'm not just talking about being mildly irritated by the noise or potential for passing on disease. I actually have an emotional and physical reaction to it which, on occasion, has caused me to physically harm myself (biting myself on the arm - more of this later...) and kicking a wall. This may seem excessive, until I confess that I'm much better off kicking a wall than punching the perpetrator in the face to try and cease the noise (which is what I really, genuinely want to do).

Okaaaay. So things I'm going to explore and think about over the coming months (days, years?) just to wet your appetite so to speak:

Scientology
Birth Experiences
The Dog
Synesthesia
How often does the average person sneeze each day?

Myself, I've done it 4 times so far today.