A proposal

In the interests of honesty, transparency and the reduction of homicidal tendencies in the wider population, I propose that 90% of organisational websites should re-name their "contact us" section to "don't contact us, we're not listening". This should be a statutory requirement unless said organisation can demonstrate that the relevant page displays at least one and preferably both of the following:

1. An email address (preferably one which will reach actual human people, who have been trained in actually reading email and replying to the questions asked therein, not copy-pasting chunks of documents based on certain keywords that may be mentioned in the email, regardless of context)

2. A phone number for a line that includes, within the first menu level, an option for "speak to a human being". Emphatically NOT a number that takes you through approximately 7 layers of menu before spewing you back to level 1 if you haven't managed to fit your personal, unique (probably that unique, but not actually accommodated in The System) problem into one of the categories for which recorded responses can be given.

Any organisation found, say, to be using links like "email us" to generate a choice of automatic forms that do not in fact include an option for a general email should immediately lose its licence to operate menu-based phone systems and the like. Yes, a licence should be required.

Briefly interrupting pregnancy-free blogging to say

...lady, I realise that your intentions are honourable, but sending a slew of diet-and-exercise-for-pregnant-ladies and plus-sized-and-pregnant links - after commenting on how I am getting rather "round about the hips" - is really not the way to keep me away from the cookie jar, okay?

Grrr.

Sorry about that. The problem with limiting all sprog blogging to the sprog blog is that, well, the sprog blog is open to the public. Meaning, the in-laws. Meaning, the offending party.

Who just spent 2 weeks as our houseguest, doing most of the cooking, and doing it with vast - VAST - amounts of bacon and double cream, just by the way. Not that I'm complaining. Well, not about the cooking.

The update, updated

For tedious and tiresome and sadly unfightable reasons, the 9 days I thought I had to make permit happen turn out to be only 4 days. Which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to resemble 5-10 days, even with begging letter. So I give. I surrender. The universe does not wish for me to be in Cape Town this year. Fine. I won't be.

If anyone out there knows any good curses, please direct them at whatever idiots thought it would be a good idea to outsource all visa functions to the private sector. I thank you.

Bureaucracy, the update

Oh it just gets more and more exciting. This whole "apply for entry clearance while in SA" thing? They need "5-10 working days" to process. Which is interesting, considering I'm only in SA for... 9 working days, including arrival and departure. Huh.

"You can include a cover letter asking them to speed things up and giving your reasons," I am helpfully told. Obviously, based on past experience, I do not have a whole lot of confidence in that. I imagine that the 5-10 day time is not because they actually require 10 days to ponder the merits of my application, but rather, because applications arrive and get dumped on the bottom of a large pile of other applications. They work their way through the pile, and reach mine when they reach it. Say, 15-45 days after submission. "Oh lookee," they will say. "She wants urgent consideration. Aw bless."

So the ulcer-inducing panic continues. (This can't be good for The Bebeh.) I fully expect to be stuck in Cape Town longer than expected. While some of my Capetonian readers may rejoice at this news, I do NOT, for reasons of (a) cost of new plane ticket (pretty sure mine doesn't allow changes) and (b) obligations back in London. Cancelling a few shifts would be annoying enough, relying on my freelance income as I do, but it's worse than that: Saturday 6 September is iKnit day. Big ol' knitting expo that I'm exhibiting at. Really not okay to skip it. Really not viable for Beloved to do it without me.

Arg.

Dark (adj): devoid of light; causing dejection

The clocks going back always takes me by surprise. Or at least, the effect of it does. What?! Dark already? But it can't be, it's only 5 o'clock! That's so... so... depressing.

I seem to suffer from random attacks of seasonal affective disorder. This year is worse than most. Which quite possibly means that it's not SAD at all, but stress, or hormones, or some other unrelated thing. Whatever. It is dark and gloomy, and I am dark and gloomy.

Thing is, I sort of love this time of year. Dark and gloomy? Yay! Let us cuddle under duvets and drink hot chocolate and eat cookies and knit! I was born for this! But here's the fatal flaw: I don't have time for any of that. (Well, maybe the hot chocolate.) And maybe that's what's causing the gloom to be really gloomy, rather than fun gloomy. Conditions are perfect for doing what I most love to do, and I can't do it. So I feel all sulky about the things I do have to do, and I procrastinate, and then I have even more stress and more stuff to worry about, and less time to knit, and so it goes.

Anyway, here I am, having put off going to Tesco all day and now it's dark and gloomy, and going for a walk is so much less appealing than it would have been earlier, when it was bright and crisp and rather lovely out there. Let that be a lesson to me.

Maybe I can get some cookies while I'm there.

Things I didn't say

"In the absence of blogging I have no idea of what's happening in your life."

Well, see, you do. What was happening last time I saw you? I was working a lot. What has my blog been - boringly, repeatedly - complaining about? Working a lot. What is my usual excuse for not blogging? I'm working a lot.

I say this without intended sarcasm or rancour. That's how it is. I'm working. And not on anything that gives me fodder for sparkling conversation or, indeed, blogging. Sorry.

"I feel like we're back at university - I mean, you're still wearing teal! You look just the same!"

I really hate being told I look just the same as I did 10 years ago. It's true, of course (at least if you ignore the inevitable wrinkling, sagging, expanding). I have occasionally cut my hair a bit shorter or coloured it a bit darker or redder, but I always default to the same basic, vaguely oldfashioned look. My clothes are a bit less exotic than they used to be, and a bit less battered and holey, but tend to follow the same silhouette and colours. So I can't complain about being told I look just the same - hey, if I want an image update, that's easy enough to do; but I don't actually want it.

Still, I hate the idea that I haven't progressed. It's been 10 years. That should be enough time to have completely reinvented myself. Yet I'm still just the same, only with less free time, and less conversation.

I feel boring. Really, really, really boring. I like to say I'm in touch with my inner granny, and it's true; I did after all spend most of high school knitting. (I'd like to point out that these days there are plenty of teenagers who knit *and* have a social life, but that wasn't really an option for me, for reasons I won't bore you with.) But I'm not always happy about my basic old-lady-hood. Increasingly I have nothing to say to my friends. All these lovely people, whom I've known for years, who are smart and funny and lively... and with whom I suddenly don't seem to have much in common.

Socialising has become hard work. The London factor (distance and public transport) doesn't help. I hardly ever see most of my friends; but there is another group of people I see a lot more regularly. Some of whom are clearly becoming my new friends. The knitters. There's a huge number of knitting groups around town, and I occasionally manage to make the effort to join some of them. At first I told myself that I was more motivated to join the knitters because I could chalk it up as almost work - it's a networking opportunity, it's market research. Which is true. Then I realised that there's more than that; knitting restores my energy, whereas socialising per se often depletes it. And just this week I realised there's another reason too: among these people, I don't feel boring. I can share the knitting stuff that's taking up so much of my headspace; I don't need anything else. It's enough. It's okay.

The same sort of thing is happening with blogging. I'm struggling to find time for the knitting blog too, but it's a bit more active than this one. Maybe not that much more, but some. Sorry, folks. But look on the bright side. At least I'm not boring you...

PS. It's extremely likely that this feeling explains my unnatural excitement when anyone I know expresses an interest in learning The Knit. Be warned: if you so much as hint at "maybe I'd not hate trying to make a scarf", I go into full pusher mode.

PPS. I am distressed to find out how many tags I already have to suit this post. Sulks, whines and boring! And I haven't even been using tags that long! See? I really have gotten dull.

Sulks in bulk!

So about this "not done complaining" business (below). I considered complaining in an email to a friend, but frankly none of my friends have done anything to deserve that. I considered waiting till Beloved came home and complaining to him, but that didn't seem like the loving thing to do.* I considered complaining some more over here, but I think it's about time to try raising the tone around here, before it hits scummy pond floor level.

So I did the only thing I could do.
I started a new blog.

I made it ugly so that no one will stick around to read it. It's like the anti-blog. It is not for reading, it is for dumping. And I would like you all to share in its whiny, pathetic, ranty joys. No! Not by reading, gawd, don't you listen? No, I want you to dump too. When the mood strikes. You can get signed up as a member of the miserable McWhineFace clan by leaving a comment, or emailing me. Act now to be prepared for any attack of sulks in future!

_____
* Well I mean I'm going to do that anyway, *obviously*, but it probably would be best if he didn't have the full force of my tantrumy sulks to deal with.

My un-favourite things

Screw all this fluffy cosy positivity. I'm not in the mood. Can I just talk for a minute about the things that do NOT make me happy?

Things like, say, the technojinx?

Yes yes fine, I've caught up (more or less) on six months of accounts, and mostly everything seems to still be there, and maybe I can get Photoshop back (although I don't have it *now*, and that's making me (more) grouchy), and I do appear to have sound so hooray for that. Rah technology. whatEV.

A weekend of catching up on accounts when I could/should have been doing all the many other, more interesting things I need and want to be catching up on... that makes me cross.
A computer that has (almost) everything basically there, but just a bit *wonky*, and needing yet more time investment... that makes me cross.
Being supposedly on diet, so that I can't even console myself with a large bag of cookies... that makes me cross.
Failing utterly to stick my diet (yet without sinning to the point where it gets fun), so that I don't even have anything to show for my supposed self-denial... that makes me cross.
Actually everything about diets, in practice and principle, makes me extremely cross; but knowing that I do in fact need and want to lose weight, and exercise alone just doesn't do it - that makes me GRRRRRRR.

Bollocks to it all, I say.

(You know, you should all count yourselves very lucky I haven't blogged about my previous battles with the technojinx. Normally I hold off - not so much out of wanting to spare you, as just out of embarrassment and a deeply ingrained sense that it must surely be my fault for imagining I know how to use a computer. But this is not the first encounter. Oh no.

Maybe I really shouldn't be allowed to use a computer.)

Update: Oh, now I appear to be missing most of my fonts. How did that happen, exactly? I never went about downloading lots of fonts. I had them. I was just using the fonts I already had. The ones that came with whatever programs I had. All of which I have reinstalled. So they should be there. And they're not. And you cannot conceive of how many problems this causes for me.

GRRRRRRRR.

Update 2: I am deeply unhappy.

No reason that isn't included in the above. I just don't have anyone here to complain to right now, and I'm not done complaining.

Unhappy. Booooooo. This is *so* not how my time off was supposed to go.