Faster the Chase

Life has been moving along at a rather leisurely pace since university finished. I have spent my time eating, sleeping, reading non-university prescribed texts (woohoo!), watching Heroes and snuggling up to Daffyd.

Last Saturday was Korf PVP (past vs. present), where a selection of old players came up to uni for a game and whole lot of drinking. I forget who won the match now, no one takes it particularly seriously, I think it was probably the past team though... Sunday there was a mini tournament type thing organised by Castle, which suffered slightly from lack of people to make up teams, and so ended up just being a 3 hour game of korfball… which was a tad tiring! Maz came and crashed on my floor for the weekend, which was cool having not seen her for a long while. Though she does consistently make me wonder how she survives in the real world…

I certainly suffered after my sporty weekend, having not trained for a few weeks!

This weekend was the infamous Castle Tournament. Dave and I got up at 7 on Saturday morning to pack up all the camping and korfing gear, pick up a couple of other korfers from their respective houses and toddle off to the rugby club, arriving at 8. We then spent 2 hours helping to set up, building gazebos, marking out pitches, making sandwiches etc… Thus followed about 8 hours of solid korfing and trying valiantly not to fall over on the Astroturf pitches (read: glorified sand paper), with some intermittent water drinking and sun cream application. The weather was absolutely glorious, despite a pretty unspectacular couple of weeks. As pathetic as my skin is, I was burning through my t-shirt in the 8am sun, so I spent most of the day obsessively slathering on factor 30. As a consequence, I think I am actually whiter now than I was to begin with… ace. In true KUKC style, we came last, managing to be beaten even by the team which was only assembled at Christmas… which I helped to train…

The social in the evening was a good laugh, with a performance from Tom’s band and lots of general drinking and dancing-ness. We crashed out in our tents at about 1am… to be woken at about 5 by a rather impressive car boot sale set up about 100 feet from our tents. Most of us were up by 7, stood outside the tents looking bleary eyed and sunburnt; and making fun of the car boot sale goers and the drunken antics of the previous night. Dave and I packed up and were home for about 9 to go back to bed for a couple of hours. We spent the rest of the day eating, unpacking, eating, generally tarting about and eating…

Dave is in school next week on placement, so I am going to have to amuse myself for a lot of the time. We have spent pretty much the last fortnight together constantly… and in all honesty it has been lovely. At the risk of speaking to soon, things seem to be going really well. I told him I loved him on Saturday night, in our tent, because, well, I do. In my own way, which I suppose will be difficult to understand. His response? “About bloody time, I’ve properly loved you for ages!”

Oh.

I am still getting used to this different kind of relationship- trying to be less clingy and demanding and selfish and unreasonable, not being able to get away with it anymore. Dave is much less tolerant and indulgent of me. He doesn’t worship the very ground I walk on. There is no pedestal for me to sit on here! It’s a little difficult and I don’t altogether like it, but perhaps it will make me a better person in the end? I don’t know. For the most part, there are no issues, and things are just Lovely.

I am dreading the time when I have to go home and be alone. When I am most likely going to realise the enormity of the change, the loss of The Boy shaped comfort blanket, the utter dreadfulness of my recent behaviour, the immersion of myself into another ridiculous long distance relationship which may not even work out because Dave can be an arse sometimes (conveniently forgetting that this is true of all men…) and I am most probably on the rebound anyway… But for now I choose not to face up any of this.

Dave is taking me home on Friday night… which is going to be excellent to explain to my mother… Then we maybe off to Bristol for another Korfy tournament, though I haven’t decided if I really want to go yet. I am of the tendency to wallow, at the moment and tournaments mean effort, even if it is fun in the end.

Plus I have NO money, and a million things to pay for, which is a bit of a bum.

That is all.

Comfortably numb

Well, i got the job. Christ knows how, i'm certainly not the greatest interviewee ever. But whatever. I am now a trainee immunologist! 60 people applied for that job. 60! They interviewed about 20 i think. And they gave it to me. Me me meeee. Mwhahaha.

The lab itself is really big and specialised. A world away from the one in Stoke. Seems kind of quiet and serious though and the workforce is leaning towards the aged... not sure how well i will fit in, but hopefully it shouldn't be too bad. Its a step in the right direction, if nothing else.

The lab manager thinks i am still at uni (which i suppose technically i am...), so i have a month or so off to doss around now before i can start work. They have references and CRB checks to sort out though, so i don't feel too guilty about it.

I feel far too grown up.

This weekend i went down to London with The Boy and his awful, arrogant, crack snorting, binge drinking bands. The gig was good, but the company was strained so all in all not the best day. And the 14 hours travelling... not so good either. I detest travelling.

I have spent most of the weekend itching to get back to Daffyd. But now it comes to it i desperately miss The Boy.

We all know Facebastard rules the world, and The Boy's "relationship status" is now set as "single" which i guess makes things official.

I would like my old life back please.

Summer is 'ere...

Wow so I have been pretty lax with my updating again… Not that anyone much cares, I suspect!

I have had a really lovely couple of days. After spending a week at home recovering from the post exam dissertation slog, I came back to uni for Joey’s birthday outing this Friday as promised. I have to admit I wasn’t much looking forward to going, but I ended up having an ace time. I was once again shamed for my frequent episodes of Jo related bitterness by Jo’s boyfriend Dave, who thanked me drunkenly and profusely for coming out, telling me “everyday I hear something about you Rach, I’m so glad she’s got you”.

Bless.

Woke up on Saturday morning feeling massively hungover and spent most of the day tarting around doing nothing in particular. The weather has been glorious for the past week or so, so on Saturday night Dave and Alex built the barbeque in a manly fashion and me, Katie and the majority of the residents of the PGCE block spent the evening eating burgers, drinking alcohol, playing football and just generally enjoying the nice weather. Oh, and talking about being teachers…. (not me and Katie though….)

On Sunday, Dave woke me up at some ungodly hour and we prepared food to go on a picnic. We spent the day at Trentham Gardens, eating, lounging around sunbathing, people watching etc. We had a really lovely time together. Shockingly.

I now have some rather fetching sunburn. Red and white and stripey, it’s a good look.

Monday was another impromptu barbeque, this time with Roo in attendance and yesterday Dave and I spent together doing nothing in particular again….

Anyway. I have now officially finished university. I successfully managed to write my dissertation and some other awful biochemistry literature review thing in five days, so as of the first of May 2008, everything was done and handed in. Finito. Woop. What an immense feeling of relief that was. Though naturally, me being me, the exuberance wore off very quickly, once I got bored of having nothing to do.

So now I have to join the real world. Which is upsetting to say the least. I have a job interview next Friday for an immunology post at a hospital not too far from home. Immunology isn’t microbiology, but it’s always been a toss up between the two disciplines to be fair. I would really really really like this job. So fingers crossed.

In less sensible news, I have no idea who my boyfriend is, and it seems unlikely that I ever will. The Boy and I have been apart for about six seven eight weeks… I don’t even know. Daffyd and I have been “seeing” each other pretty much the whole time since then. Things were a little rough at first and seemed much more difficult than they should have been. I at one point came to the conclusion that things weren’t going to work with him and was going to finish it. But in hindsight, it was a stressful time of exams and work and breaking up with people and rumours and gossiping and… yeah. Whatever. Things started being nice again, I was too much of a chicken to end things and so… it would appear we’re “in a relationship” as Facebastard would say. The thing is, The Boy is still desperate to try things again. I’m in two minds. When things were horrible with Daffyd, the temptation to go running back was immense. I would ring him and we would chat and it’d be nice. Whilst at home last week I spent a little time with him. Things were easy and comfortable and do-able, I suppose. But it doesn’t feel the same. I am terrified by the prospect of not loving him anymore.

There is only one actual solution to this problem, and that is to have neither of them. I am never going to decide who I want and it’s not even fair that I should be allowed to. I always want the one I’m not with and as a consequence am constantly flitting backwards and forwards between them, forming no meaningful commitment to either of them. Everytime I have a nice day with one, I decide upon them… until the next time I have a nice day with the other one… I have possibly managed to build myself the “perfect relationship”. The conversation, laughter and convenience of The Boy, and the sex, excitement and alternate convenience of Daffyd. Of course, if I truly liked either of them, I wouldn’t be able to behave this way, would I?

But being single is not an attractive option. In my head it is a fabulous meld of Sex and The City and Bridget Jones- all expensive shoes and drinking too much wine. But the harsh reality is that I have no friends, no job, no money, nowhere to live and family that annoy me. So…

Am tempted to give things a try with The Boy again. Three years is a long time and its not like I will have lost anything through trying (except Daffyd… but then is he really likely to be a forever thing anyway…?). If only I could make myself feel the way I felt about him just a few months ago. But then I have lovely days with Dave, and I think “this could work, it really could”

That is all.

Day whatever

So my updating has been lax. I have been overwhelmed by other things.

I have finished my finals now which is one thing. They went with varying degrees of success. Now i have five days to write my dissertation. Which makes my brain go all wiggley if i think about it too much, so i won't.

I'm simply overwhelmed with congratualtions and support from all my so-called friends today.

I really do feel incredibly bad.

Day Three... Is it day 3? I can't even remember...

So my mind is beginning to unravel slowly. Well i say slowly. I don't know the exact time course of these things. But my head, anyway, its not well.

Yesterday afternoon, around lunchtime, i managed to convince myself fairly successfully, that the logical solution to the whole problem would just be to kill myself. Cue a long internal debate about exactly how painful it would be to slit ones wrists- though why i was thinking that i don't know- i am an immense pain wimp and so any suicidal activity would almost certainly involve taking an overdose. But that seemed less messy and dramatic and tragic and whatever... The semi-logical part of my brain argued however, that after 4 fucking years slog at this degree, i would not be wanting to throw it down the pan 4 weeks before finishing. I would have to do my exams first. But then part of the problem is the sheer volume of knowledge i am having to squash into my brain currently and once exams are over that problem will cease to be in existence thus removing some necessity of the suicidal act anyway...

Then i had a cup of tea and a sit down.

Joey came round last night and beat me senseless for not telling her about splitting up with The Boy before. And she listened to the saga in a typical non-judgemental and blunt Joey way. I was reminded of the reasons i love her so much and shamed for my previous bitterness towards her. In many ways, she is much more like me than Ruth and Katie, and i like her much better for it. We established that i need to make a decision, and stick to it. Which of course i already knew. She seems much more pro-Daffyd than others, for reasons i am not sure of.

Then my man free week disintegrated entirely when Daffyd got back from a Tom's band gig and invited himself round to "see how i was". I resisted for about 30 seconds... but i figured i was feeling better after seeing Joey, so wouldn't be doing much thinking anyway. So he came round and we chatted and snuggled up for a bit, and then he left. AND THEN... i called The Boy... because an "unknown number" had been calling me all evening and it was quite blatantly him, so i thought i'd check he hadn't topped himself or anything. He hadn't. We had a minor chat, despite both of us saying we really shouldn't be talking to each other... He cried a little but otherwise seemed fairly reasonable. I felt guilty. But i didn't miss him. I didn't feel overwhelmed with affection. In fact talking to him reminded me slightly of the way i used to feel about my now Ex-ex boyfriend (who incidentally i have been Facebook stalking recently...) when we split up and he would whine down the phone at me for about 6 months afterwards... But not entirely. I do still love him after all.

Today Ruth was back for a while and so i spent most of the afternoon with her and Katie and periodically Alex. I had a laugh and forgot about things for a while, which was nice.

I may then have spent most of the afternoon flirting with Daffyd via Facebook, which isn't entirely in keeping with the spirit of the week either. He is cooking me dinner tomorrow. Which i will feel ferociously guilty about for a number of reasons: mainly the fact that it is (was) my 3 year anniversary with The Boy. But then i am single now. But... whatever...

I'm really not doing myself any favours...

Sigh.

Home time i think.

Day Two

So...

Last night i missed The Boy. Painfully.

Today Daffyd has messaged me and i want to see him. Though i am not going to let myself.

The Boy is ignoring my messages. Which is fair enough, i deserve it i suppose. It is (would have been?) our 3 year anniversary on Thursday.

I feel so pressured.

I am going home to make myself a cup of coffee.

Male Free Week

Day One:

Mood: Confused, tearful, moany...

Nausea Status: High

Boy Contact: Some minor MSNing...

Revision: AMI and breast cancer cases written up

Revision actually absorbed into brain: None....