Today I stand taller and stronger,
than I ever did before.
The demons that once tortured me,
don’t have their power anymore.
I have healed and I’ve recovered,
and on this day I stand proud.
I’ve never felt so happy and in control,
As I do now.
Copyright © Little Emz 2013
…No it definitely isn’t pre moon tension, there is absolutely no mistaking the fact that what I have been suffering from (and so has everyone within a 50 yard radius, indirectly) for the past 10 days is pre-menstrual tension. The reason I used the analogy of pre moon tension is this:
Once a month, just as a werewolf turns from a human to a wolf on a full moon, I turn from a (almost) perfectly functioning, caring, lively female, into a crazed, psychotic, emotional, angry, panicky, anxious, hopeless, clumsy, brainless, narcoleptic-insomniac (honestly…go figure!), with a totally insatiable appetite and an inability to interact on a normal, socially acceptable level, with practically anyone!
And so, in the same way that the stereotypical ‘good werewolf’ knows that on every full moon he must lock himself away, shackled and chained in a bunker/cellar/other solid and safe room, in order to protect society from the dangerous and uncontrollable evil from within him, when he transforms into his supernatural counterpart; I am beginning to feel that for at least a week out of every month I should do exactly as the ‘good werewolf’ does; totally incarcerate myself, in order to protect both my loved ones and general society, from the evil, horrible, dangerous monster that I become.
I write this about myself with a semi-humorous tone, but the reality of the situation is that this condition really does interfere with my daily life, for at least a week out of every single month.
Relationships become impossible, to the point that after the rage and disagreements, I completely lose all interest in my boyfriend. If he dares to speak anything other than whatever it is I want or expect to hear, which generally is anything at all other than what he says, then I simply shut him out. He can’t say the right thing no matter what, every word that comes out of his mouth irritates me and I simply don’t care. Except I do; deep inside I am full of self-hatred and self-loathing towards the nastiness that escapes me, beyond my control. It has become a regular cycle, for me to finish with my partner/s (current and past), once a month, because they do not meet my irrational and unreasonable expectations.
My kids irritate the hell out of me. Whereas normally I will tolerate their normal, adolescent back-chat, loud hyperactive bouncy behaviour and incessant demands for my attention; I just can’t cope when I have PMT. My temper is short and I snap at them without thinking, and often I swear uncontrollably, I know I shouldn’t speak that language in front of them, yet I have no control. Pre Menstrual Tourette’s?
For the past 10 days ( I came on 3 days late), I have spent 70% of my life, sleeping! On the verge of narcolepsy, my fatigue sweeping over me and taking me unconscious within moments of hitting ‘the wall’. However, at night I am unable to fall asleep without the aid of 2-3 times the normal amount of sleep aid. Hence my reference to narcoleptic-insomniac. This insomnia can also lead to panic attacks as my mind-chatter, also possessed by the PMT monster, says crazy things to me, brings up past memories that I wish to repress, and offers me frightful visions of a dark and bleak future.
I worry about EVERYTHING! I worry anyway, but seriously, when I have PMT every tiny little thing worries me and every situation I am in has the worst possible forseeable outcome, in my mind. For example: I was the only mother who waited and waved the coach off this morning as my daughter went on her first school trip. Being the only mother doing so, my mind then told me that fate was playing a part in this, and that I was waving her off because, like in some horrible tv drama, this was going to be the last time I saw her. Another example: Overtaking a lorry on the motorway. On a normal day, I would worry about the pull that happens as the car passes the lorry and the wind catches slightly. On a PMT day, I imagine the lorry swerves into me, sending my car into the central reservation, where it then spins back onto the motorway into oncoming traffic, causing a 20 car pile-up and a very horrific death for me. My kids are informed of the tragedy and 200 people attend my funeral, dressed in my favourite colour; pink.
The Andrex puppy makes me cry.
I become unreasonable. Example: On a normal day, when collecting my mail from the sorting office, I totally understand that if I’ve forgotten my collection card, that rather than even attempting to collect my post, because it is the Royal Mail staff duty to protect our post and not hand it over without ID, I would have to go home and get my card. On a PMT day, I disregard this concept, walk into the sorting office reception, explain that I haven’t got my card but since they recognise me they can give it to me anyway and then proceed to curse them and storm out, when they refuse to do so. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the female member of staff, whom I criticised for being useless and ridiculous.
I can’t concentrate and most words over 5 characters, do not make sense to me at all. Does that word even exist? etc. etc.
I could go on about this for hours, but now that my period has finally arrived, I realise that going over and over it, is wasting precious ‘calm hours’ that are better spent catching up on everything that didn’t get done over the past 10 days. It isn’t a funny thing to live with, it is debilitating, unbearable and life altering. I wonder if the myth of the werewolf, actually originated from an ancient tale about the woman who ‘turned’ (into a monster) once a month.
There is no cure, except for menopause, I assume. And that is a whole other issue/fear that I don’t even want to think about!
Relationships are a bit like a maze; you keep trying different paths, different routes, hitting dead ends, finding new avenues. Every time you think you’re almost there, you realise you’ve found another booby trap, another obstacle. Eventually, one day you are either going to find the prize in the middle, or one of you will find an exit, until that day, just keep trying to solve the puzzle.
Tonight’s first look Hollyoaks has seen an explosive, devastating scene, that left me literally crying my eyes out. However, despite the fact that all mine, and my best Hollyoaks friend’s, predictions have all gone out of the window, one question still remains unanswered:
Where is Silas Blissett?
I will be honest with you here, I had predicted that the bully story line between Maddie Morrison (played by Scarlett Bowman), and Esther Bloom (played by Jazmine Franks) was going to end in the death of Maddie, at the hands of Silas. Clearly I was wrong in my prediction as tonight’s story line showed. Unfortunately for us viewers, the evil Maddie wasn’t killed off in a horrifc murder at the hands of the serial killer who graced our screens last year. Instead she left her friend, Niel (played by Tosin Cole) to die in order to save her own life. I am glad that Final Destination met Hollyoaks, to finally get rid of the evil B**ch, in my honest opinion. She deserved everything she got, although with both Maddie and Niel out of the way, and with Maddie’s last words, blaming Esther, I don’t think Esther would agree with me right now. I was rather hoping that Silas was going to be the person to finally shut her (Maddie) up. Clearly I was wrong.
So WHERE IS HE? It’s been a good while since he escaped prison, and the whole of Hollyoaks seems to have forgotten about him. Surely this isn’t permanent. Surely, the writers haven’t simply written his character out so subtly that they thought we’d all forget about him? Of course not, he will be back. The question is, when?
I would also like to know, who was it who slept with Sinead at Ash’s party?
I guess we shall have to wait and see. I look forward to those story-lines far more than I am enjoying the current one. Please don’t get me wrong, the current story-line has had me blubbering and balling my eyes out, but it’s the story-lines that could come, that have me gripped. I hope Hollyoaks won’t let me down. I seriously doubt it.
I wasn’t going to go to the display at The Grand Pier in Weston Super Mare, as it was raining for a good a few hours before hand, however I talked myself into it because I had already had my two practice attempts at photographing fireworks at 2 previous displays and it seemed a shame to waste that and have to wait another year.
I got to the display with about 20 minutes to spare only to realise that I had forgotten the connector to fix my camera to the tripod… a very big thing to forget as obviously the camera has to be still to photograph fireworks, I might as well have forgotten the whole tripod. I didn’t have time to go home to get it so I asked a local bar for some blue tack. They offered me a small amount about the size of a marble, this would have to suffice!
The display started 45 minutes late, so I could have gone home to get the right equipment after all, however missing the event wasn’t a chance I was going to take, not after all the rigmarole I had been through to get that far! The reason the display was late, was because somewhere close by was having a display of their own, from the ferocity of their display and its endurance, my assumption was that the person holding it had some kind of beef with the owner of the pier, though once the pier fireworks did finally start, it certainly shone above the other one.
So I managed to get 5 good shots out of 223 attempts, baring in mind that my camera was precariously balanced on the tripod with a tiny bit of blue tack. I am really impressed with the shots that were successful though, my 3rd and final attempt of this year proved worth the effort.
The image below shows the start of the display where fireworks streamed along the surface of the water from underneath the pier. I actually really like the look of this image.
On Monday 5th November I went to another fireworks display to set about my second practice attempt before the big display off of Weston Super Mare’s Grand Pier, this coming Saturday. My first attempt can be seen with my favourite, overall shot here and my favourite interesting shots here. Once again I bundled up my children, tripod and Canon 350D dinosaur SLR, this time remembering to also include hats, gloves and scarves for the kids, then made my way to the display at Hornets RFC. I found a nice spot behind the stadium, piled my kids with treats and then set up and prepared. I remembered to set my ISO down to 100 this time, in fact it was the first thing I did! What I didn’t take into account was that I was at a much closer range at this display, so my 70-300mm lens was the wrong lens for the shots that I wanted to achieve, NB: another lesson learned! As a result I ended up with a lot of very close up shots which were incredibly hard to take since the range of the fireworks in the display varied with each explosion, so I pretty much missed the display because I was too busy moving the camera, focusing and shooting.
However with all that I am quite pleased with some of the results….
Above: f/11, 6 Seconds Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm
Above: f/11, 1 Second Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm. Exposure offset adjusted and Saturation tweaked in Adobe Photoshop.
Above: f/11, 1 Second Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm. Exposure offset adjusted and Saturation tweaked in Adobe Photoshop.
Above and Below: f/11, 4 Second Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm. Exposure offset adjusted and Saturation tweaked in Adobe Photoshop.
Above: f/11, 2 Second Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm. Exposure offset adjusted and hue adjusted to blue in Adobe Photoshop.
Below: f/11, 2 Second Exposure, IS0-100, Focal Length 70mm. Saturation tweaked in Adobe Photoshop.
I had to have a giggle today, my 4-year-old daughter drew this picture and when I looked at it I had to question what the round things were on the woman’s chest. I bit the bullet and asked her if they were boobies; she giggled and confirmed that they were! Teehee! Earlier in the car she told me she didn’t know how to draw a dress, so I am now led to believe that the way she depicts the female form in her drawing is to draw the womanly features! Quite observational for a 4-year-old… or should I be concerned that she is drawing like this?
You know that you were the better looking spouse when your son starts drawings pictures of the family for a school project…. I had to take these photos and do this! *Evil Laugh*
This morning I went to clear my camera when I realised that some of the images I took at last nights firework display, hadn’t transferred. Among all the appalling shots, I did quite like the following ones because of their colours and shapes.
The first shot below, a close up firework shot was taken when I had the camera set to the wrong ISO at 400, it also used a 2 second exposure time so I am not sure how it actually came out so clear. I guess the more practice I get, the more I will understand how shots evolve…
I absolutely love this next shot, it reminds me of a flowing horse main or a tidal wave. I especially like the rusty colour, but also decided to mess around with hues in Photoshop to produce the second image in purple. The original shot, taken as seen below, was shot at a 149mm focal length, ISO 100 and 3 second exposure at f/11.
Image below – hue adjusted in Photoshop.
Finally I just love the neon glow of colours in this shot, especially how the smoke captures the colour too. This image was also shot at ISO 400, so I assume there would be more detail where the white flashes are, if I had remembered to lower it before hand! Focal length was 70mm and a 4 second exposure time.
All images taken on my Canon 350 (EOS Digital Rebel).
I knew I was going to a fireworks display this evening with my children, and I had been planning on photographing a big display next weekend so I took the opportunity to use this mini display as a practice session. My kinds were so wonderful and patient as I set my tripod up on a bridge and fiddled around with the settings, blindly trying to manually focus a black sky ready for the main event! By the time the fireworks started, 15 minutes late, my poor kids were freezing, bless them! Anyway, the fireworks did start, eventually, and I set about with the shutter speed set at bulb, messing around with different lengths of time on the remote whilst trying to zoom and focus on the display. The results were appalling, probably because I forgot to set my ISO before the fireworks started and only realised after about 5 minutes of over exposed images, NB: Lesson Learned…
Out of 108 shots I manged to capture one good (IMO) shot. This was taken on my dinosaur Canon 350 Digital Rebel, f/11, ISO 100, focal length 70mm and 1 sec exposure time. I shall take this on board for the big event next weekend!
