I don’t actually know what happens to time. It’s now almost late
May and I haven’t put anything up here for months.
I don’t know where those months have gone, but I do know
that that at least part of me seems to have gone to sleep in that time. I don’t
mean that I’ve been depressed or had issues
or that anything has gone wrong. I haven’t taken catatonic drugs, become a
Valium fiend or had a lobotomy. I’ve caught no African sleeping sickness and no
one has had to call in Dr Gregory House to explain my strange lethargy.
No, I actually can’t really remember what I’ve been doing.
Working, yes. Eating (too much), sleeping (never enough), talking, meeting
friends, having the odd working weekend, trying to remember birthdays and
failing. I’ve thought about the blog, I’ve planted veges, avoided plastic
packaging and eaten no meat. But writing anything has seemed too hard.
Basically I’ve been in survival mode.
At least part of the above paragraph is a load of crap.
Fact: I wouldn’t recognise a survival situation if it leaped out of a clear
plastic bag in broad daylight, was 90 feet tall and yelled ‘Boo! I’m a survival
situation!’
Nope. I’m experiencing middle
class survival mode. This means that
you still have enough to eat, still wear sufficient clothing and still make exhausting
choices about which shampoo to buy. You’re
just busy. And tired. And you have enough bullshit language at your disposal to
coin a term like ‘survival mode’ to describe the situation. My survival has
never been in question.
I am going to stop this sleepwalking state. I’ve suddenly
found a lot more energy. Funnily enough the lack of energy appeared about the
time I gave up meat, and disappeared about the time I began wondering why I
kept having such long naps on weekends and began taking iron pills to counter
this.
Who would have thought?
The problem is that I’m now behind on everything I meant to
do this year. We’re coming up to winter and I haven’t yet thought about a whole
heap of changes I should have made. And as far as the not shopping thing goes …
well, I’ve done better than previously by not buying any cheap, easily
disposable, made in China items. The NZ fashion industry (those members of it that
still make garments here) has benefited a little from my lack of self control.
Shhhhh! Don’t tell the boyfriend.
Well, I did make my own washing powder a few weeks back. I can’t
remember how many weeks.
All you need is Borax, soap flakes and washing soda. It
actually works a treat as well. Borax is hard to get hold of, but you can buy
on Trade Me or get it at Bin Inn. Washing soda comes from the supermarket and
so do soap flakes. If you want to be especially industrious buy an old
fashioned bar of sunlight and grate it.
According to some reading I’ve been doing on the net though,
you shouldn’t use Borax if your waste water goes onto your garden. Too much boron
will kill plants. And too much exposure to Borax can affect your fertility.
Read all about it here:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/a/howboraxworks.htm
But it does seem to be the lesser of many evils … and the
resulting washing powder is not expensive at all.
