phobia

My Illustration Friday attempt for "phobia".

My Mum loves Mr You, but not too long after we got together she pulled me aside for a mother-daughter chat. With an expression on her face as though she had discovered that he was one of those people who picks his nose in the car while stopped at traffic lights, she launched in to her chat. It was short and to the point.

“Flossy, he’s just lovely, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to carry his children”

right…

She was referring to the fact that I’m very short and he’s quite tall. She continued…

“He will have tall babies and I’m not sure your body will cope.”

So you can imagine what that did for the fears I already had about having kids!

Co-incidentally (before I saw the new IF topic), I’ve already confessed these fears just recently. The cliff notes are that I have a phobia about being pregnant and breastfeeding. (Is it any wonder?)

Turns out I’m not the only one with this fear, so it seemed strange to me that this very comprehensive list of phobia’s doesn’t have anything to even remotely describe it.

Sure “Arachibutyrophobia” is there: the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth!!! But not a whisper about pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding. Might I suggest this list was prepared by a man.

Seriously, peanut butter on the roof of your mouth??!! In my opinion that’s one of the pure joys on this earth! I know having a baby is also one of those joys, but I might just stick with the peanut butter for a little while longer, thank-you very much.

NOTE: I realise after having a second look, that this illo may raise concerns. Let me assure you, despite how it looks, Mr You is not Big Bird!

johann's tash

Two people get on the train today, obvioulsy strangers, they sit behind me, not together, but nearby.

Nice Man: "So what song was that you were just singing?"
Nutty Woman: "Oh, yes that was (insert name of some concerto here) by Johann Strauss! I adore singing Johanne Strauss. Johann Strauss was from Austria, he composed wonderful dance songs..." and she launched into an essay about Johann Strauss, after obviously already having sung one of his numbers while waiting for the train.

At this point I put my ipod on. Later, during a quiet point in between songs, I could hear her still talking about Johann Strauss in great detail. I managed to quickly grab a pen and jot down this little gem before I forgot it:

Nutty Woman: "Johann Strauss's face was very good looking, he had a moustache!"

Well, I'll let you be the judge of that...

If you ask me that's no mustache, that's a beard who's chin part couldn't bare any more classical music and ran away to ROOOOOCK with this dude.

chalk the walk

We nipped into the city today to check out Chalk the Walk, Pavement Art Festival. I think my expectations were a little high as it wasn't as impressive as I expected (see Julian Beever's work for an example of my rather high expectations), but there were still some great pieces.

I didn't even notice how 3D these aliens were until I was looking at my photo's...


This was our favourite; gnarly octopus...


And then there were these pretty ladies flashing their birthday suits around a gorgeous garden. I really liked this one too, although you probably already knew that after seeing the shadow of my happy little spirit-fingers!


p.s. I don't normally get about town spirit-fingering things I like... "Hey bus driver, nice ride man! Spirit Fingers for YOU!"
I was actually just stretching up out of my short body to try and get a better photo, but then again I didn't realise my fingers got so happy when taking photo's either until I saw this. Maybe they do this more than I realise.

not helping

If I was to tell you Mr You asked if I was “ready to get sprogged up” this morning, I realise I may need to elaborate.

I want to have a baby… just not now. I’m still a few years off (I’ve been saying that for a few years now). Before I’m ready I have to somehow overcome my mortal, yet somewhat irrational fear.

I’m not afraid of babies. I have actually grown to love them, I’m even much less afraid of childbirth than I used to be. It’s the other stuff that makes me physically squirm; being pregnant and having a whole other person growing inside of you! It’s not a vanity issue, it’s more the result of watching V and Alien movies at too young an age causing long lasting damage.

But the worst pasrt is that I can’t even say the “L” word without feeling nauseous. You know, the “L” word that describes what happens to allow you to feed your newborn baby. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeewww.
Let me clarify; I have absolutely NO problem with women breast feeding, I think it’s a wonderful and natural thing… when other people do it.

It’s become such a joke for Mr You and some “so called friends” that they often say things just to take pleasure in my displeasure.

Once, when at some friends house for dinner, I walked into the room at the tail end of a conversation just to catch Mr You say “…yeah, watch this” he aimed toward me, loaded and then fired “Lactating Sow Udder!”

Oh! And how they all rolled in the aisles in hysteria watching my body twitch and my face contort into a shape similar to the way it would if I was to lick the belly of a moulting cat.

“Don’t you want a sprog slurping at your boob?” our friends, parents of two children themselves (or sprogs as they refer to them), managed to squeeze out through the laughter. "C'mon, spit out some sprogs". And on it went.

So, back to this morning with Mr You reading a news article about the current baby boom, reading a sentence out loud to me here and there:

“…will help avoid the economical downfalls of our aging population”
“…but will cause schooling crisis in a few years, and eventually an extremely competitive employment market”
“… are they attributing it to the baby bonus?”
(our government, believe it or not, offers a baby bonus of $5,000 for newborn babies)

Then he asked me, “Have you seen the new advertising campaign about having children before you get too old?”
“No” I replied, and sighed at the mounting pressure to hurry up and get over this roadblock before I’m “too old”.
He spun around and looked at me when he heard me sigh, concerned.
Then asked, “Are you ready to get sprogged up?” right before the taunting laugh returned.

That’s not helping!

change

My Illustration Friday attempt for "change".

As I perch on the edge of a very large life change myself, this week’s theme couldn’t have come at a more poignant time for me. Next week is my last week working at my job that I’ve been at for 8 years. I’m about to step over the edge into the unknown to try and move my working life away from the big beige business world, and align it more with my creative aspirations. Become more colourful.

My plans are small, vague, unformed, and cloudy. But you’ve got to start somewhere right? As exciting as this new start feels I’m petrified. Scared about how I will feel not being at my job after so long, thinking of what I will miss, and what I do next.

I find change hard. It’s a strange see-saw between excitement about a new opportunity, and a sense of loss and fear of the unknown. But there are many things I’m looking forward to. I’m grateful for that excited curious anticipation that is sitting just behind the fear, egging me onward. And I’m looking forward to taking the next step and seeing what colour I become.


EDIT: This is a re-worked version of my illo which demonstrates the effect I was originally after much better. My idea was based on colours growing out of the beigeness, but grey works better, and my beige was too bright. I guess the colour is already starting to seep in.

katamari

Okay, so I'm a little late off the blocks, but have you played this yet?

Last night I got to play Katamari Demacy on Playstation for the first time. It's SO my kind of game. There's bright colours, weird but cute characters, there's no blood, and the aim of the game is to push a sticky ball around and pick up bits of stuff lying around. It starts off small, picking up hair clips and batteries, but eventually your sticky balls gets so big that you can pick up fish, cats, people, buildings, etc, all to a snazzy tune. It's adorable, addictive and leaves you with a strong desire to to tidy stuff up! (Granted, with a ball of tangled sticky tape, but still, cleaning up is cleaning up).

cover your eyes

“You’ve got to just be cool” Mr You tells me. His Fonzie like mantra rang straight through both ears as I filled with excitement to the point of giddiness this week when I received a comment from Shauna.

Shauna’s What’s New Pussycat was the first blog I started reading regularly, and I still do, the first one that made me get the point of blogs. I’ve been reading her posts for years now; she’s wickedly funny, entertaining, and an impeccable writer. Even though I’m a huge fan (or maybe because of it) I’ve only ever lurked, so when she left a comment for me this week I completely freaked out.

Before thinking it through I dashed to her site and (sadly in the most uncool fashion) left the gushiest, most babbly comment EVER. I can’t even remember what I said now, something that resembled a giddy star-struck teenaged girl. I think I even compared myself to Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch. eeek!

It was pret-ty bad.

The next morning flashes of the incident popped into my head. That awful feeling you get the morning after a big drunken office Christmas party and awake with a bad case of make-up smear among other things, flooded my entire body. That feeling of distant, unsure, but impending regret.

Pensively, through and apprehensive grimace, I clicked on the link to where I last left the offending comment… and it was gone! (that’s a bad sign)
BUT what’s worse, the entire post on which I left the comment was also GONE! Completely disappeared! No trace what so ever. That’s a really BAAAD sign.
(I hoped that maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing, but in every messy morning after somewhere deep down you know it’s real.)

I don’t know what happened, and it hurts me to think about. I eventually ran the whole scene past Mr You, prefaced with “Am I being paranoid, or does this seem bad?”

“OMG you’ve done it now” He shook his head “What have I told you? You’ve got to just chill out and be cool”

After a day of biting my lip and chewing my fingernails I returned to the scene of the crime. They say the guilty always do. And as though under a socially-spazmostic spell (or curse) of some kind, I left yet another long babbly comment on the next post. I couldn’t stop myself. WHY????

Anyway, it appears that Shauna has been watching nature shows about being under predator attack in the wild and has assumed the favoured survival pose. Fold your arms in tight, protect your vital organs, drop your head, avoid eye contact, stay very very still and don’t… make…. a…. sound.

Sorry Shauna. (gulp). I didn’t mean to creep you out. I guess I've learnt that I’m more of a Joanie than a Fonzie.