A Saturday Kind of Saturday

Sam tells me he took Otto out at 4.30am and Otto had a wee and a poo, when I wake up. A small, croaky voice from the depths passing on that vital information as I get up to greet the day.

6am. Otto and I are out the back waiting for Otto to have a wee. The Rainbow Lorikeets are loud in the gum tree, really loud, like fish & chips with seagulls at the beach loud. I could tell Otto wasn’t going to have a wee, he just sat and gazed up at me with his puppy face.

"Come on, more effort than that is required," I say to him.

He just gazes back with his big brown eyes, unmoved by my request.

I put Otto in his outside playpen. It wasn’t so cold that he couldn’t spend 5 minutes out there, even if I felt a little guilty for doing it. I got wallet from the bedroom and my laptop while I was there, tip toeing in and out. 

I headed over to the bakery and got bread. It is the last day they are open until next week, so today is the day.

The baker asked the question why do we need sleep. “I have never been able to work it out?”

Please no difficult questions before I have had my coffee, I think. “Because we like it,” I say. I know I have always liked it. It’s one of the few things I am good at.

“Yes, obviously, I like it too, but why do we need it?”

It was too heavy for me at that time, I could still feel the morning fog in my brain, besides I had a puppy I had to get out of his playpen and encourage to wee.

“Ah? Er?" I feel my eyes widen. "Yes well." I do that head tilt think and the inhale of breath thing. "You have a nice weekend,” I say.

“Yes, you too,” he says.

6.15am. I am out the back with Otto. He still has no inkling to wee. Tapping my foot with him won't help, I know that. Suddenly the Rainbow Lorikeets take off. It is suddenly 1000 decibels quieter. I hear them flying around, some circle around and come back to the gum tree.

“No, don’t come back,” I call to the universe. "As lovely as you are," I add quickly.

Otto takes off inside. Grrr! He and Bruno always seem to know when I am distracted and not exactly concentrating on them. Bruno when I am walking him and I start to text, he'll stop walking and sniff about the place to his heart's content. I run after Otto. I’m still unsure if he should be tackling the garden stairs at his age. He is quick.

I make coffee.

Otto sits on the couch with me.

I can’t remember what I thought of last night for the short stories I am working on – always write it down, I tell myself. Always write it down. I never remember.

Otto curls up and sleeps, as I look at my laptop.

Israel, Gaza, Israel, Gaza. Oh, it is awful, isn’t it. Is it awful that after reading about it for days, I now skip over it altogether? I guess it is?

Surely, Israel should just stop now.

7.53am. Sam and Bruno are up.

I take Otto out for a wee, and he finally does. Yay! Good boy. Good boy! Finally, you little fucker.

8am. I make Vegemite toast and coffee.

8.45am. I make more coffee. I take Otto out for a wee for a third time, puppies need to go regularly until their bladders grow. The little red & white bastard runs back inside. I run after him. He has to go in his cage if he doesn’t want to wee. I can't risk the carpet, beside that is a part of the crate technique of house training, curtail their freedom until they are house trained.

Otto barks in his cage as his breakfast is being prepared. I haven't had a bulldog that is quite so vocal as Otto.

11.47am. We walk Bruno to Victoria Street.

It is overcast, warm, but windy.

I stop off at The Salvos. Sam walks on with Bruno. I don’t buy anything.

I run all the way down Victoria Street afterwards, as I know Sam will be getting the hump by the time I get to him.

12.31pm. I get to The Hive. Sam heads inside straight away.

The wind is picking up.

12.43pm. We’re outside the butcher shop. 

Some drug fucked guy was lying on the footpath writhing about. At one point he pulls the front of his tracky’s down and gets his dick out, in front of all the punters walking past him on the footpath. He has red pubes and pale skin that looks as though it hasn’t seen sun light in decades. Then he stands up and acts as though he is in pain. He seems to be having an episode. He is making sounds like a wounded animal. We should really be asking him if he is okay, but he is incoherent with the pain. Suddenly he takes off down Victoria Street veering off into a laneway heading to a carpark.

Awful, really. Poverty and drug addiction with mental health thrown in. Which condition effects which other condition? It's kind of chicken, or the egg?

The sun has started to shine. The wind has started to blow harder.

12.49pm. We’re at the pork bun shop as Sam gets four pork buns for our lunch. The people, who I assume are the owners, come out the front fascinated with Bruno. People are so often fascinated with him.

The Vietnamese place where we normally eat lunch with Bruno on a Saturday, where the guys who run it are fascinated with him too, will be bold over when we turn up with two of them.

1.06pm. I went to Bunnings on the walk home. I had a disaster with some creeper falling down taking out some terracotta pots. Good thing I don't mind terracotta pots with scars, in fact, it improves some of them. So, I bought glue and terracotta pot sealer.

At the checkout everyone is faffing about. Seriously people get your acts together. I, at least, stand behind a guy with an incredible arse to perve at, not that it makes up for the continuing delays.

Sam waits out the front with the shopping bags and Bruno.

And with shopping bags over both shoulders and Bruno, I said to Sam, "Can't wait to add Otto to this mix."

One bulldog can be stubborn, two will be interesting. You see Buddy always walked off his lead, well, all the time we had him and Bruno together, so he just walked with us. Buddy was just a clever boy.

We walk up Victoria Street/Parade > Cambridge Street, where Sam leaves us to head home to check on Otto and his puppy bladder.

1.30pm. Bruno and I are home.

We ate a big pork bun and a smaller sweet pork bun for lunch.

I start uploading all the other CDs that I have, now that I have a big capacity laptop, which is one of the reasons I bought a 1 terabyte capacity laptop, so I can upload whatever I want. All those ambient CDs I only listen to occasionally, or haven’t listened to in the longest time. Buddha Bar, Real Ibiza, Café Del Mar, Leftism, and Pet Shop Boys, Deep Forest... 

I've got to get on and upload the rest of my CDs to iMusic. The theory is that then I can dispose of the physical CDs that take up so much room, but, um, er, I don't know if that will be happening. I'll store them some where, much to Sam's chagrin.

And that was kind of it, a Saturday kind of Saturday.

Otto has sloppy poo and we continue to take him out the back all night hoping to avoid a soft poo accident inside on his bedding, monitoring because if it keeps up we'll have to take him to the vet.

We ate leftover Mongolian Lamb, Bok Choy and beef. 

We watched Dog House. Some lucky chick gets a blue French Bulldog puppy to take home.

We watch George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces. Some people are so clever.

10pm. Sam and Bruno go to bed.

Bruno arrives back down in the lounge later.

I fluffed about waiting for Otto to wake up. Midnight, I take him outside and then take him upstairs to his night time playpen.

12.30am. Bruno and I go to bed.