Life is like a sudoko until Pete Evans hurts your brain

This week's cast:

Have you made the life changing decision to go paleo? Because if it is you might want to stop reading now before I hurt your feelings by saying mean things about your God, Pete Evans.

I don’t really do new year's resolutions other than ‘drink less booze’ which I think I’ve finally achieved after years of hang-overed failure. Rather than new year's resolutions, I like to be more positive than that so each year I pick a mantra for the year.

My colleague Rosemary’s work mantra every year is the same:

Do as you are told

Go on holidays

Be nice

Eat chocolate.

My mantra for this year was “Just because something is true, doesn’t mean that it needs to be said at that particular moment” and then I changed to be a resolution to eat fewer gummi bears from the gummi bear box at work. Then I ate a bunch of gummi bears on the 2^nd of Jan so now it’s back to “Just because something is true, doesn’t mean that it needs to be said at that particular moment”.

Although after my last post, I think I might have as a secondary principle – “celebrate adequate”.

Anyway, what does this have to do with my unhealthy negative feelings towards Pete Evans?

Look it all comes back to the problem with the modern world. Modern day society and its internet is dangerous place for a sensible person to spend time at the best of time. It’s also extremely dangerous for a feminist to spend time. The planet is filled with passionately ignorant people who want to share to their world view.

At times, these people are maddening.

You can’t allow yourself to find it maddening though. Being outraged at the world is not way to live and shutting yourself of from the world is not the solution either. You must leave the house and function without being enraged constantly.

To help me cope with other humans, I have developed certain strategies for protecting myself from the ignorance of the mainstream media by mainly laughing at people and shrugging things off.

My number one strategy is to pretend that the world is giant sudoku, you just do it the way it’s supposed to be done even if there is no meaning to it. A sudoku uses numbers but it is not maths. Andrew Bolt uses words but he is not a sense making person.

“The Aboriginals are to blame for terrorism because left leaning people made up the stolen generation and that’s why the terrorists think that we are ready hate ourselves”. [this is actually what he thinks, like actually]

 

I counter your argument Mr Bolt by saying, this column needs a 9. I shall now return to my happy place.

Using this strategy, I’ve trained myself to read a whole article by him without getting offended. It’s also, much like a sudoko, satisfying to know that you’ve accomplished it. Increasingly you can improve your skills by taking on more challenging puzzles.

Every now and again though, something slips through the cracks of my Sudoku system and once they’re in I can’t get them out.

It’s when I least expect it that they come my way. The most offensive people I can deal with, it’s the middle of the pack, just kind of annoying people that get me. Earlier in the day I’ve deftly fended off Pro-Life protesters near my work (by ironically imagining that they were a collection of three little 6s in a row ready to be distributed into a sudoku) and then BAM – while watching an innocent cooking show, I’m flattened.

Aren't they cute?

   

I first realised that Pete Evans had broken through the Sudoku gates over multiple conversations with a friend from work.

Draxela’s daughter has food intolerances to pretty much everything so she’s had to become quite the expert in all of the approaches in food from veganism to paleo, FODMAP to adding butter to your coffee. Draxela's daughter couldn’t sleep because of the mystery intolerances and a completely sleep deprived Draxela survived as best as she could on coffee.

Anyway Draxela seems to have worked out what her daughter can and can’t eat and is now feeling a fair bit better that she’s sleeping. You can read more about her chronic slept deprivation on her blog.

 

WOW, it’s like the world is in high definition… I can remember details like where I parked my car! This is heaven!

  

She was still a bit addicted to coffee though, which I supported as a valid lifestyle choice. I have no shame in admitting that coffee is my favourite vice.

I didn’t realise how much I was ruminating on Pete Evans until she suggested seeking help.

Obviously I had mentioned that I hated Pete Evans about 1000 times during all of these conversations about allergies and diets. The Draxela directed me to a (support) group on facebook called ‘blocked by Pete Evans’ so that I could be with my own kind. With their help, I am dealing with my Pete Evans related issues. If you haven't visited the page, please do, it's very excellent.

I didn’t see Pete ‘Immagoodperson’ Evans coming, I didn’t have the guard up and now he’s in my mind and I can’t get him out. I already knew what quinoa was when Pete Evans came along so I was all like “what can you do to me hey? I know what foods are high in omega three so you don’t even need to go there man.” Also I was generally only knew of Pete Evans on My Kitchen Rules and Manu was there talking about homemade puff pastry so I thought I was in safe hands.

I take issue with Pete Evans and his shameless smug promotion of disordered eating to vulnerable teenagers who are eager to learn how to hate themselves.

I honestly don’t care if you want to eat paleo or vegan or even a diet entirely of watermelon and Fanta. It’s your life and it’s largely boring. But if you’ve ever known someone with anorexia nervosa or what a lot of people refer to as orthorexia, you’ll know why I feel the way I do about Pete Evans. He has also suggested that our diet is responsible for the number of people who have mental health issues which is extremely ignorant and perpetuates the stigma that mental health problems are the failing of the individual. Also he’s friendly with a lot of anti-vaccination folk from the North Coast. Massive frowny face.

Also and he’s criminally smug. That smiling son of a bitch has set up camp in the middle of my happy silent space in my mind. He’s smugly making a fucking salad which he is smugly calling chakra –omg it has bacon in it. Most hindus don’t eat bacon how can you call a salad chakra when it has bacon in it, do you think paleo is a more balanced lifestyle than Hinduism, do you think paleo is a religion, oh my god, oh my god I’m coming undone!

And suddenly the Sudoku system has fallen apart. I’m spiralling into a cycle of realising the depths of Pete Evans’s stupidity. It’s an internal reinforcing cycle of logic and anger.

The strict structures of the sudoko have been replaced with this:

Once I’ve escaped the spiral, I am left broken and overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal and despair. I direct this anger to the person I hold most responsible, the only logical person to blame, a Frenchman.

Manu, how could you? I expected this of some hipster white Australian guy with suspiciously white teeth… but you, you are French. The French talk of vegetarianism like it’s a disease. You cannot eat a meal without providing analysis on le sauce for 20 minutes! How could you stand near someone who suggests that we cut cheese out of our diet?

Anyway I may be able to forgive Manu for his crimes by eating my way back into safe sudoku territory.

Smelle

Honestly I could probably sleep through a hurricane.

CAST OF REGULAR CHARACTERS CONTAINED IN THIS POST

Deciding that I should probably attempt to grow up and to join the real world I went and got myself a real life boyfriend (Rowbi). I’ve been single on and off for a couple of years and while most people would wake up gazing into the eyes of their lovers I would wake up to this:

First thing in the morning the cat wants breakfast and I to continue to sleep. So every night we have this same discussion.

Me: zzzzzz

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Me: shhhh

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Me: Die!!!!

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Then she jumps on my bed and sleeps near me. Sleeping with the cat is like being strapped to a torture apparatus of some description and every time you move ever so slightly you get an electric shock. Every time I move ever so slightly, the cat thinks that I’m about to get up and starting meowing at me. My friend called her the "trip-wire kitty".

She’s also gone deaf and bit senile so she sometimes forgets that my Mum has given her breakfast and comes into my room to wake me up just for shits and giggles. Also telling her to shut-up literally falls on deaf ears. Her strategy for keeping me from sleeping reached new heights this year when she realised that if she monopolised access to my pillow I would be more likely to get up. Additionally she is super comfortable and within inches of my ears so the meows are particularly intrusive.

I’m actually pretty good at sleeping despite the meowing though and honestly once I’m fully asleep I could probably sleep through a hurricane. I also can hardly concentrate until I had a decent dose of caffeine. Someone could break into the house and murder Rowbi and I will be of no use to him until I wake up and get a cup of coffee. Then and only then will it occur to me that his lifeless body should probably be causing me concern.

You see I have learnt to sleep with noisy things.

In year 9, at my high school, you spend a year at a rural campus living in houses of between 9 and 12 squealing 14 year-olds. We all slept within about 20 metres of each other so there was a lot of night time chatting and sing-a-longs and such. If for some reason you did need to get an early night, you learnt to sleep while people were giggling, dancing to the Fresh Hits of ’02 and discussing the best process for hanging up posters of Josh Harnett. If you were sick, you slept with noise or died.... or went to the sick bay which meant spending time with the dimmest nurse in the history of mankind which was equivalently painful as dying. In the morning, we had to be ready by 8:30am so my best friend and I always got up at about 8:27. (At this point feel free to be impressed that I can make the bed of a top bunk and get dressed in 3 minutes). Because we got up as late as possible, this meant that we had to be able to sleep through the chirping of early rising housemates getting their worms.

Also I’ve had boyfriends from about the age of 16 and have had to share beds with people most Friday and Saturday nights for the past 5 years on account of my hobby of getting drunk so the presence of a second or third person in my bed does not faze me, even if that person is a stranger.

Earlish in the morning, my mother also like to make phone calls and discuss unimportant things with my father like baby-sitting my brother’s children the following Tuesday. Her inside voice is still pretty loud and she thinks that I’m a bit lazy so her sympathy for waking me up is miniscule.

Also I live on a busy street and in a flimsy house made mostly of glass so I hear cars roaring and drunken bogans quarrelling all night. I also live across the road from a public swimming pool. This means that during the non-opening hours of the pool (ie the middle of the night) trucks are constantly pulling up and conducting some sort of activity that involves a great deal of pumping. During this process, the truck has to be kept running for some reason so it continues to huff and puff until you’re ready to blow your head in. This is usually finished off with a Greek plate smashing ceremony of some description. I’m not sure why plates have to be smashed as part of running a public swimming pool but that is most certainly what it sounds like. This whole thing is finished at the crack of dawn and just in time for the swim squad to start and the sound of the coach saying “Set and go” and then blowing a whistle. Then splashing. Set and go” and then blowing a whistle. Then splashing. And repeat 100 times.

Despite my ability to sleep through virtually anything I was unexpectedly woken up from my slumber the other day though. It was a Sunday there was some sort of carnival happening at the swimming pool and this man said over the loudspeaker at about 10 in the morning (I was still in bed with meowing cat) “We’d like to thank everyone for coming down... You’ve made it great”. He sounded like he was actually standing in my bedroom and I thought to myself “Oh did I have an orgy last night? Funny, that doesn’t sound like something that I would do but there is a strange man in my bedroom praising a large group of people for a huge team effort.” And then for a moment I thought that maybe it was someone was trying to auction my house even though we were in it and hadn’t really indicated that we wished to sell it.

I sat up and realised what was going on. I thought I would attempt to get a bit more sleep and as I turned to straighten out my pillow and doona and stuff before settling back in, I saw what Sneaky Snooze Faced McGee had achieved in the half a second I had been distracted:

So the sleep-in was off and I struggled to get out of bed and on with my day. It was OK though because Shelley’s OK.

Love,

Elle xx

Sometimes nothing is better than ‘better than nothing’.

I used to work for an accounting firm as an administration assistant.

As such, I’m sure you will understand the profound need for a decent amount of caffeine.

The firm was too stingy to by a decent coffee machine so we all had cheap instant stuff which was a bit depressing but it was better than nothing. And by better than nothing I mean that in the same way that getting brown leather school shoes from Santa is better than getting nothing.

As you can imagine, news that we were getting a coffee machine was met with delight office-wide.

We got the coffee machine not because of a stroke of generosity on the part of our bosses but because we did the accounts for this coffee machine company. The company had gone broke and couldn’t pay their bill. So they offered us a coffee machine as a form of payment.

Better than nothing hey.

Or not.

Once the coffee machine arrived it became pretty clear why the company had gone broke. It was a fussy little thing. Also because the company that made it no longer existed, to get it repaired you had to follow a certain formal process. This basically involved going and getting the receptionist and watching her poke and prod it until it started whirring again.

Something this coffee machine was really good at was breaking. More impressively, it seemed to stuff your coffee up in so many different ways. It wasn’t like “Oh from time to time, the printer gets a paper jam in the 4^th tray” sort of malfunctions. The wide varieties of the way in which this coffee machine could crap itself were nothing short of impressive.

One ‘feature’ of the coffee machine was that when you asked it to make a drink, it used some coffee making skills to put something into your mug. At this point, it decided its work was done regardless of how much the final product resembled the drink that you ordered.

It did seem to understand though that different buttons were requesting different products so it actually made an effort to make each drink different. Over time I learnt how to translate the coffee machine’s button labels into what the coffee machine thought that they meant.

So sometimes nothing is probably better than ‘better than nothing’. You know what’s better than both, Shelley... She’s OK.

Xx

Smelle