- House. The TV show. I love Hugh Laurie, and always thought it was a quality show, but you would think that the last thing I would want to watch over the past few months would be a show about a grouchy, manipulative character with chronic pain and painkiller withdrawal. Nope. Enjoying it more than ever (maybe it's all the time I've been spending in hospital - makes it a much more natural and far less depressing setting)
- Lady Gaga. Seriously. I'm not really into the whole performance art bit, but since the (below) dance routine on SYTYCD and finding out that the 70s style rock ballad was hers, I've realised that I quite enjoy the electronic pop scene at the moment. In a true father-daughter synchronicity, he greeted me the morning after I finally downloaded both her albums with, "So, do you like Lady Gaga?"
- Pop music in general. I'm probably meant to sing jazz myself, and I would like to think that I want to write for theatrical settings, but I really enjoy and respect a good (note: good) pop song.
- My current hair colour. More than a year ago I decided to try brown, and I'm pretty sure that the couple of years during which I had psoriasis on my face have darkened my skin tone. I always kept it auburn-y (or occasionally dyed it gingery or had highlights), since the Burt genes demanded red hair, but I can actually wear a pretty dark brown these days without looking ill like I used to.
- Exercise. It's totally natural to me to be working on the cycling in my chair, the physio exercises and going for wee walks, and quite enjoyable. Two things I have realised: first, that a lot of my complaints about having to do any kind of organised exercise probably came from a lack of leisure time in which to do them, and two, when you're ill with time to kill, it's nice to have a project.
- Scrapbooking. I'm not saying I'm going to be a top interior designer within the year, but it's good to be working on something creative, even in assembly only.
- Handwriting. I've appreciated the instant logging aspect of computer-based research, but I genuinely enjoy the therapeutic side of the physical task. My Christmas cards, even, were a lot of fun rather than something I wanted to do because I thought it was worth the effort.
- Living with my parents, sort of (steady on, Burt). I didn't have a difficult adolescence at all (unless you count everything up to the age of three, which we tend to do), but I honestly thought that I had got past the stage where I could imagine moving back home and having it be constructive, or perhaps it would be more honest to say that there were disadvantages to my living in Stirling (away from social circles and so on) and combustible aspects to an intense living situation that were quite all right as long as Kathleen Got Her Space. And Internet Access. And Regular Holidays... I'm not saying I'm high maintenance... I will say, though, that over the first few months of my illness things went pretty smoothly, surprisingly, and we all managed (for the most part) to live in a one-bedroom flat without too many incidents. My father and I did, however, spend three weeks almost constantly in the same room, without leaving the house very often, and after a couple of days we were bickering like an intergenerational Odd Couple. And wittering not infrequently about flying squirrels, but that's a story for another blog. My mother and I took to watching Chess in Concert on a loop and communicating solely through Facebook. This, however, is really quite functional and sentimental for the Scottish family as personified in the Burts.
- Vegetarian food. This is in no way a flimsy pretext for telling you, dear reader, about my mother's yester-daftness when she walked into a butcher's in Castle Douglas and asked if they did vegetarian food. Okay, maybe a wee bit. But I go meat-free for a long time, these days, and don't usually miss it - only were I to remove it from some essentially meaty dish.
- Kind of mean reviews. I feel bad for this one. I would like to be a completely sincere and gentle person (with a healthy appreciation for good, native sarcasm, if such a thing were possible), but I keep giggling at things like this:
"Being the title character of “The Phantom of the Opera,” the most successful musical of all time, wasn’t enough for him. Oh, no. Like so many aging stars, he was determined to return... And he might as well have a “kick me” sign pasted to his backside."From Ben Brantley's NY Times review of "Love Never Dies".
- Dieting. Short version is that my body is definitely changing the way it does business. Or processing, rather (which used to be quite dysfunctional). This may mean that I have to wave bye-bye to my automatic low cholesterol but it does mean that the reward for my eating plan is the more normal-person experience of the weight falling off at my calorie intake. As long as that keeps going... and while I'm pretty much just sitting around, which is the really weird part.
- My thesis. Okay, this isn't exactly surprising, since everyone has known for some time that I tend to view the world through a biblical and ritual lens, but right before I got ill I finally felt I'd had a breakthrough in terms of actually being able to put one word after another and write the thing. After all, it's not much use knowing a lot about the issues if there's not a tangible output, and intellect alone does not the doctorate make. I've had a real problem with tangents the whole way through, since I'm generally quite insecure about bits I may have missed and avenues I have not explored. However, I feel that I know what it is I need to do to get from here to there, so to speak (does anyone actually talk like that?) and my enthusiasm for the actual process, as opposed to the topic, is back with a vengeance. Now to stop myself nodding off every time I try to read a book...
- Academia. Again, this both is and isn't surprising. Over the past year or so I've been quite resistant to the idea of an academic career, partly out of a sense of inadequacy and inexperience and partly for practical reasons - i.e. with my medical condition it would be hard for me to have that kind of international mobility to follow a career path as a priority, since I'm really dependant on the kind of system we have in this country. Following the employment opportunities to an insurance-based system with a pre-existing condition just wouldn't work. But putting that on one side, I've had a lot of time to think over recent months about how much I have enjoyed the teaching, as well as the research, and am a bit more laid-back and realistic in my goals. I may not be about to cry at the thought of not lecturing and going to conferences, but I would like to end up using my specialist experience in a somewhat specialised environment, if possible.
- Travel brochures. Travel is a given, but at one time the thought of sitting around reading about exciting places while being stuck in a chair and housebound would have horrified me. However, they have been a great source of entertainment and excitement as well as giving me food for thought in how (assuming a certain level of recovery) I might think of developing my travel desires.
Top of the list: Syria (permanently), Morocco (ditto), Spain (ditto to the ditto), China (the bits I haven't seen), Philippines (new), Mexico (returning to the list), Cuba, Brazil, Tunisia, Vietnam.
Usual suspects temporarily deleted due to difficulty of access to particular interests in current condition: France (sigh), Poland, Egypt, Israel, Hong Kong, Peru, Tanzania. Morocco should probably be among them, but there would still be lots that would be accessible, and I just couldn't bear it...
- Colour. From someone who is redecorating her bedroom in black and white, I'm falling in love with colour again. Lots of colour. Everywhere. I will probably focus on three colourschemes when I eventually have a place of my own: 1. black and white, 2. crimson with dark wood, 3. a riot of colour. I'm all about the sensory experience in that respect. And I've been watching a lot of Ugly Betty. I could move into that show.
- Spanish. It's not surprising that I'm into languages and I've studied Spanish before, but not really thought about it for a few years. German is very natural to me but the romance languages never quite clicked with my brain in the same way. Even now, French takes a couple of days in France to truly warm up and be easy for me. However, after making a lot of headway with French in the past couple of years, and getting over the difficult building-block stage with Italian, I have returned to Spanish on the grounds that it needed to be revised from scratch, a lot of grammar and vocab is probably dormant in my slightly frazzled brain, and it's definitely one of the most useful languages in the world where travel is concerned, probably at least on a par with Arabic and French (and English, of course). I've been making a concerted effort to transform my Castilian Spanish ("c" = "th") into Latin American Spanish for that very reason. Not only is that coming quite naturally - and it never did before - but things I don't remember ever learning before are flooding into my brain and sticking, probably as a result of intervening French and Italian. Fabulous.
- Singing in public. I'm hooked. I get terrible nerves, but oh, the adrenaline rush. I blame Whitney. She started it... then Meg demanded crooning... then John gave me an opportunity and his impeccable musical taste.
- Having friends all over the world. Now, that's not to say that there are disadvantages, such as having been taken in so warmly by Whitney's family and not having the opportunity to see them for more than three years now due to my illness in November. Or my former neighbour and frequent wake-up call Allison all the way over in Denver. Or not being able to see Whitney in Evita. Or having my faithful burger buddy (and fellow student of the Dead Sea Scrolls), Narges, disappear into the Yukon. Or having Shawna and Jeremiah, two of my very best friends and two of the nicest and most caring people ever in Boston. But I feel very blessed to have all these people still in my life, despite the distance, and we have Facebook so I could have a good long chat with Narges on my wall on my birthday. Jeremiah came back for a visit and he and Danny made me a nostalgic meal of red pesto and pasta. I spoke to Shawna on Skype fairly recently. Whitney and I are never going to get rid of each other. Meg has been so constant in her phone calls and support, while starting a major job and getting her thesis finished. I really owe a great number of people a great deal of thanks for the prayers and messages of support (especially on my wall on facebook) over the past few months, and in many ways the online community has been every bit as real as having you all around me. The post office still sends the Christmas cards, the internet does the rest, and I feel like there are so many great friends within reach, even if months pass between emails, and so many reunions to come. Also, there will be visiting.
- Making new friends. I remember when Whitney left and I (being an introvert) was so socially exhausted from the beginning of the PhD that I struggled to make the effort to get to know all the new people in my programme. Of course, it was worth it, but I've always found the process quite tiring and costly. Not so these days, it seems. I've really been enjoying meeting people, even those who are only here for a year (after all, Whitney was one of them). I'm not only interested in people, but have lost that insecurity that would have stopped me asking questions and probably made me look a bit self-obsessed (moi? Never!). And not just friends - nurses, phlebotomists, physiotherapists, assistants, electricians, estate agents, waiters, IT technicians, librarians... all sorts of people with whom I have had cause to interact over the past few months have borne the full force of my enthusiasm and fellowship. It's not safe to be around Fife any more.
- Teenage things. It's probably a bit late to start getting into the 'scene', but I think the combination of hanging out with younger theatre enthusiasts and teaching teenagers got under my skin. I love the upcoming generation and get quite defensive of them - the lingo (though I feel I'm probably too old to start yelling "Dead Sea Scrolls FTW!!!1!1" in a seminar), the fashion (I've readily adopted turquoise nail varnish), the music that, sadly, is new to them but takes me back to the 80s... Well, I've decided to buy green eyeliner, hang out in the shopping centre with a friend, and hit Primark on Thursday.
That is all.
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