all sneezy and snarly today. Got up at 5 am coughing and though exhausted after a bad night's sleep, couldn't get back to dreamland, so surfing the net instead. Tried calling my sister in Oz for a chat but the rat bag was out on a Saturday night. Doesn't she know she has to sit by the phone in case I ring? Off to drink more ginger/garlic/lemon/honey concoction which burns pleasantly as it goes down.

I go in waves with these things, and obviously now I'm on one:

	You are Kermit! Though you're technically the star, you're pretty mellow and don't mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer.
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!

had a nice lunch with a new friend. We met at 1 pm and all of a sudden it was 4. I do like meeting other women, and also it reminds me that I have settled in a bit, I am not nearly as desolate as I once was, and that is good. So chatted out, here I am... Also bought BJ a cute Clifford the dog denim jacket. I lost his last one one an outing. I promise to keep a better eye on this one. Then went and bought myself, and the house, a really pretty bouquet of multi coloured roses, such perfect flowers in such eadible colours. I do love flowers.

you know the more I think about my alter ego, the more accurate it is! Go and do yours and tell me how it went. :-)

went to a gym class and I was the only participant!! So it was like having a personal trainer, which sounds like fun but is actually a bit too intense for me. You can't hide when they are watching your every move. I was soaked with sweat by the end, which I suppose can only be a good thing.

Off to lunch with a friend, enjoying the hint of storm in the air.

got this one from hestia's blog, but she isn't taking comments just now, so I can only steal! Hope all is well hestia, my blog and commentary is also playing up big time. Too many bloggers on at once!

What is your Alter-Ego
Personality?

I've started on the zone diet this week. It makes sense to me, that refined carbohydrates are what is killing us, how we are still physically hunter gatherers, who survive best on protein and vegetables and have only been harvesting food for 10,000 or so years and our digestive systems actually aren't all that good at it. So here it goes. I will keep you posted!

Had a goodish day at work. I've had wonderful moments with the men's group, finding them open and willing, as far as they are able, to look at themselves. But the women have been hostile and resistent. I didn't expect it, but the last group just felt like death to me, we all sitting there and wishing the hour was over, but when I said the group feels hostile, I was just shut down. All my suggestions were shut down. I felt like I didn't want to be there. And then, later that afternoon, when in discussion with the course supervisor, he said he would love me to run another men's group, and I found myself saying, well, the women's group isn't going too welll, and just like that I switched. I will now do 2 men's groups and no womens.

Afterwards I felt bad/ambivalent. These women who want to murder their mothers and then the analytic mother just ups and leaves them for the more interesting brothers/sons. But I also felt, I'm volunteering here, and they so clearly don't want what I am offering. They wouldn't say the first thing in the group, saying that women are not to be trusted, women gossip. Men are more trustworthy with emotional stuff because they won't repeat it. They were so tough. I'm looking forward to running a men's workshop, and the women will have a more practical, less therapeutic group to go to. One thing I learnt working with addicts is that I can't work harder than the client. I can work as hard as the client, but not I can't push the therapy, it's not only unhelpful, it is actually destructive. But still... I'm aware of my sadness that the women's group didn't work and my surprise at the strength of their hostility, when I expected the men to be the disparaing ones, and the men have moved ahead in leaps and bounds.

This men's session was quiet after the huge shift in the one before. The one where they finally began to speak about their mothers (there are two camps, the mothers who are evil, and more common, the mother's who are adored.) And one of the men who adores his mother then describes the out of control beatings she gave him, and was able to see, that without anyone questioning their love for each other, that this behaviour was not okay. These people come from such enormously damaged backgrounds, it puts my personal pains into persective.

My father was violent, self -obsessed, only seeing his children as as reflection of him, not seeing them as beings in their own right. He was controlling and raging and frightening. And he is better than the best parent described in these groups. I used to rage at the culture around us for not stopping him, but now I realise that they did stop to quite an extent. What happened to these men is what happens when the surrounding culture really doesn't stop the perpetrator.

These groups really are visiting someone else's life...

i'm so sick of pop up ads, I really shouldn't be, because they are what pays for this whole interent thing, and I absolutely love the interent and think it is the most wonderful thing. Okay, so I'll stop complaining about the pop-ups.

I'm very concerned about blogspot though, I can barely get on most times, it's taking over 5 minutes to get onto my site!! and then odd things keep happening on it - the comments section disappeared again, or some of my links go invisible. Hope this sorts itself out soon.

i couldn't get onto my page now. It just never showed up. What is going on here?! Harumph!!

lately it takes forever for my blog to come up, is that a problem for anyone else? I get into the edit your blog section effortlessly, but when it comes to viewing the actual web page it sometimes looses itself. It's a bit of a worry. And yesterday when I logged on, the comments option had disappeared, yet today, (thank goodness!) it's back. Hmm... the web gods are misbehaving.

Rainy day in New York, finally. The heat was becoming oppressive and it's good to have a break. More details soon, i'm off to kindy to drop off bj.

okay, so here's a repeat. We went to Atlantic city, which is a strange place by any standards. I hate that it has all these glittering cheery lights and this palpable sense of disgruntlement beneath. It didn't reek of desperation, though it was exceptionally crowded, even with the over size corridors in the casinos. There were plenty of warm bodies there. And it was very casual, every one in shorts, I had this sort of idea that it might be the place where people dress up, but no, people were definitely dressed down. And it was crawling with children. I had an uneasy feeling bringing BJ with us into one, thinking someone would tap me on the shoulder and report me to Bad Mothers of America but there were dozens of children everywhere and even more prams.

It had this market/bazaar atmosphere, and it was certainly garish. We managed not to use even one slot machine, though the one where you play tic tack toe against a chicken did look somewhat tempting. BJ was very interested in the chicken. We went to a magic show, a sort of rip off of the bigger one in Vegas and it was actually quite good (well, as I was expecting it to be unwatchable, and managed to sit through it, I should say it over reached my very modest expectations). The switches where the slender pretty girl disappeared and the big tiger was in the cage in her place were impressive. I still don't know how they did some of it.

But I"m not going to become a weekend gambler. It never holds any fascination for me. Maybe a scene like they had in the old Bond movies, where everyone is in diamonds and black tie, playing veignt et un, (21 in our language) might work, but this is not at all seductive. In truth, it is rather repellant.

I had a really good moment with my son. I caught him going into my handbag, and he had fished out a children's advil which he was in the process of trying to open. So we stopped and had a conversation, and I said, I can't know how he is feeling, and if he is really sick, he can have some medicine, but he hadn't said he was sick, and if he is just pretending, then this medicine is strong stuff and he shouldn't take it. He looked at me and said, I was just pretending. I told him what a good boy he was, knowing how easy it is to get defensive and lie in that situation. We put the tablet back in my bag (I carry them with me because he does get severe headaches, not often but when they come they are powerful, and then he really does need them.) and I gave him a hug. I was really proud of him at that moment.

I'll talk about the group and mothers tomorrow.

What happened? It ate my blog again!!

Getting miffed here!