Life in the Fast Lane
and the medium lane
The other week I went swimming with my Mum and her friend Pat (my friend too, but you know) in the bay and as we got in the water my mum said, ‘Did you hear about the shark attack in the Swan River?’ Which, needless to say, is NOT what you want to hear, even if it’s topical and the place you personally are swimming is miles away.
It made me think of a moment in Life of Brian, where one guy accuses another of ‘uttering a discouraging word.’ I think the first guy is in the midst of stoning someone and doesn’t appreciate someone else suggesting it’s maybe not the best idea.
He just uttered a discouraging word! [Life of Brian*]
It wasn’t the most relaxing swim.
On the theme of swimming, these next few comics feel like a ‘I swim in the Fast Lane’ flex, only I swim in the Medium Lane but it doesn’t work as well to say that. Regardless of the land, the irritation one feels with a too-slow swimmer is the same. The issue isn’t the slow-ness, it’s the misjudgement of your own ability and/or disregard for other people.
(Obviously I toyed with making this all men over 40 but Carney, who fits in that category, also complains people [men] doing this.)
My sister-in-law was both undertaken AND overtaken at the same time at a pool in France. Now I’m obsessed with the idea of being undertaken. Speaking of flexes!
One of my goals in life is to go to more pools, world over so as to make more generalisations about people. A French woman told me off for having my shoes on the bench once and I’m still mad about it.
Niche Content: Real Housewives of Potomac Reunion
The Real Housewives franchise is imbued with irony. I mean, the idea the show is called Real Housewives is insane, because none of them read as housewives in the conventional ‘stay at home wife/mother’ -sense.
The Potomac reunion this year is GOLD. I keep thinking about this exchange in last week’s first reunion episode:
ANDY: Porsha from Los Angeles said, “Ashley, I don’t buy that you and Michael are divorcing because he wants to have threesomes and you don’t. You’ve looked the other way for years. Just admit it’s because the pre-nup is up, the babies are out and it’s time to secure the bag.”**
What do you want to say to Porsha?
ASHLEY: I really do want monogamy. I want to set that example for my kids.
ANDY turns to MIA: Mia, you clearly don’t share that commitment to monogamy…
[He fumbles for the right words. Some of the other housewives laugh, etc.]
MIA: What’s the question?
ANDY: The question is [Ashley’s] mind changed when she had kids…
[He’s asking: “Did your perspective on monogamy change when you had kids too?’]
MIA: Yeah. Things did change for sure. Why? Because we have all these kids running around the house. So, we’re not as open.
But one of the things that I knew was that how I got my husband, I had to keep doing those things if I wanted to keep my husband. Right? Like, it’s not fair for him for me to change.
ASHLEY: That’s very fair and that’s why I’m leaving the marriage.
Basically, Ashley is leaving her (awful) husband Michael Darby because he still wants to do threesomes.
Mia says she has to keep doing threesomes to keep her husband ‘G’.
It put me in this space of thinking about the dynamic of relationships in which the man is older and has money and the woman is younger/beautiful and doesn’t. It’s not the norm on housewives, but there are examples.
Initially, I felt sad for Mia, knowing that having threesomes is a requirement of her marriage but then I think I’m probably being righteous and prudish. Why should I be sad for her if she’s happy?
(But is she happy?)
(She seems happy.)
*Shrugging emoticon*
One Cool Thing
I’m starting a new novel and thought I’d figured out a way for getting in to it that involved exercises from The Ninety Day Novel but turns out that’s not the way this time.
This by @cheyannealepka gives me hope — There is no way!
I think I’m a True Planster / Neutral Plotter, which goes to show no matter how many sub categories you create, someone will always say they’re in-between.
Like, if you have a five star review system , people want to give three and a half stars, but if you had ten stars to begin with, thereby allowing for a 70% rating, they’d want to give 7 and half stars (and so on).
Maybe reviews systems should just allow for fractions of stars?
Iffirmations vs Affirmations
At the risk of deteriorating into a newsletter that exclusively re-packages content from the Recomendo, I loved this idea from Claudia Dawson’s book ‘Rec-o-mindo: Mindful Recommendations for Life and Word’.
It’s about shifting from affirmations to iffirmations:
Instead of saying to yourself something like “I am confident and strong” you ask yourself “What if I am confident and strong?” Asking it in the form of a question forces your brain to search for evidence that this might be true. For me, this works because it conjures images and examples of ways I could be confident or strong or have been in the past, which then elicits positive and encouraging emotions. A lot more effective that affirmations.
Aside from a plug for Season 6 of The First Time, which kicks off on Monday, that’s it for today folks. Happy reading, happy writing x Katherine
*I think it’s from Life of Brian. I looked it up online but it’s either not from Life of Brian , or it’s too much of a passing line for anyone else to have singled out.
**A trick Andy uses when he wants to ask a shady question is to say it came from a viewer.
He was fast but not fast enough is a winner.