I've got a car show to go to. I'm entering my car in it. It is a part of the car club I belong to.
Oh, but I am so slack. The last one I went to last year, I didn't even clean my car and it looked kind of shabby, as you could well imagine. Did I feel embarrassed? Not as such, I don't get embarrassed by such things, I really don't care enough. But, I did note the um, perhaps disappointment, in myself, I guess. I could have done better, as a purely intellectual thought.
I am so lazy. How did I get that gene, when, in fact, I come from a family of, I guess what you would call, high achievers? I'm the black sheep, I guess.
I really find it hard to give a fuck, about most things, I'd say. It is an equal blessing and curse. You know, there were occasions I should have cared more, oh yes there were, but also I've never been one to stressed out about stuff. Good and bad.
Things in life are really so less important than most people will make them out to be, for the most part, don't you agree?
Anyway, the annual car show is on again, so yesterday, I pulled the car cover off my beloved GTI, and I dug the old tins of car polish out from under the kitchen sink. One of them was past credible use, and I tossed it, but the other was good to go. I briefly wondered what the use by date would be on it, you know, like pulling a bottle of pills from the medicine cupboard that says good before 2017, or the tartare sauce from the back of the fridge that says best before 2021.
And I started to polish.
Pretty quickly, I had to reluctantly agree that the car needed a wash first, so I stopped polishing and did that first.
Sam was standing by the back door with his new white apple goggles on looking like a personal robot and I was able to yell out to him, "Can you turn the tap on?"
"Can you turn the tap off?"
"Can you turn the tap back on again?"
Repeatedly, which helped speed up the washing process.
Note to self, get one of those pistol grip hose nozzles that one can switch on and off.
Then we headed out for lunch while the car dried.
I got to polishing it with the very convincing red cream, the colour of the Australian deserts, as soon as I got back, and really quickly my right arm began to ache and I was left wondering what the hell was I doing this for anyway?
Jesus fuck me Christ this is hard work. And I cursed not going to Bunnings to get an electric polisher before I started. (Not that I actually thought of that before this point)
Anyway, it was a gorgeous afternoon, the sun shone, the sky was one unending blue title overhead. I listened to little retro Gnarls Barkley as the muscles in my right arm screamed at me to stop this ridiculous nonsense.
I kept going thanking my good sense to buy a small car rather than a large one over which to fan-girl.
And before long I was done. And the car looked good, even if I couldn't, exactly, tell with it now in the shadows, but I am pretty sure it did. It felt lovely and smooth as I ran my fingers over it.
Of course, I was going to clean the inside as well, I had all the best intensions when I stared, cleaned inside and out, but when I was done with the outside, I truthfully couldn't give enough of a fuck to start on the inside. Nobody will be looking inside it anyway, it is not that kind of car show. It is just a presentation of members cars, there is no judgement involved, so what the hell.
The rain falls, this morning. It is melancholy in itself. Some say it is romantic, the sound of raindrops on a tin roof. Maybe, it is, maybe it isn't. Milo cuddles up to my left leg on the couch, while he gets time with me without the bulldogs bullying him, with me under the pink blanket having drunk my coffee.
It is early, of course. It has just turned light outside. That is after I have been up a while.
I'd taken my antibiotic, which I have to take on an empty stomach, at least half an hour before food. The chemist specified not to take them with milk. So, I can't make coffee for half an hour, which is a heart ache first thing in the morning, let me tell you.
I listen to the rain falling on the roof and I think about having to make my second trip across Fitzroy to get my pills. Oh, please, I think when the rain starts to fall even heavier. I was happy about riding to the chemist to get my extra box of pills, but I am suddenly not happy about it if it is going to continue raining.
Don't make me drive, I think.
I ride everywhere I can. I started riding places as a reaction to climate change and it being the very small part I could play. (Truthfully, it was about parking, but whatever) But, It is a much more pleasant way to get around the city, I have since decided. In fact, I have really got out of the habit of driving.
Bike riding & public transport is the way to travel around the city, in fact, Govs should take it up as a transport model. Okay, sure, Melbourne doesn't exactly have the climate for really successful year-round bike riding, but that just means we have to come up with ways where people can. I hear there is an undercover bike track under the new freeway/Westgate tunnel thing, whatever it is called, so there are ways for it to happen.
Anyway, I still have to go and get my box of pills.
The rain can stop now.
Should I go to the gym two days in a row? That would please girl trainer? But, since I am not going to see her face to face any more, what does it matter. The twelve weeks is nearly up, and then I am on my own.
The sun comes out briefly at 9.30am and I smile.
9.45am. The rain pours down again, grimace.
9.55am. The sun comes out again.
10.05am. The rain is falling again. Jesus fuck me Christ!
It's like a fucking yoyo this rain/sun thing this morning. Damn it!
I ride over to get my script, which I couldn't get yesterday. As soon as I am out on the street talking to David on the phone, about aging, our normal topic of conversation, the sun disappears behind grey clouds and the heat disappears out of the morning. Grrr!
It is cold riding in the day that I now have.
I stop off in Brunswick Street to get a muffin, I'm not really sure why, but it was on my mind to get one. My usual muffin shop has no raspberry muffins this morning, in fact, they have no muffins at all. Grrr!
So, I head back across Brunswick Street to where I tied my bike up, fully intending to ride to the chemist to get my pills, but as I pass the cafe cnr Victoria Street, I spy muffins their display case. So, I head in and get one of those. Mixed berry with white icing.
Now this muffin is a meal in itself. It is not insubstantial to eat, so I decide to walk up to Vinnie's while I eat it, you know, to get through it. I get to Vinnies and I have to sit on the shelf-like window seat they have out the front, to finish it. But, it is hard work to scoff quickly as it is so big and, I have to say, gorgeous, I didn't want to rush it, so I put the still uneaten half into my bike helmet and head into Vinnie's.
Vinnies has nothing I want, so pretty quickly I find myself walking back down Brunswick Street gorging myself on this spectacular muffin, which I only just manage to get finished by the time I get back to my bike.
Now I need a ride, I think to myself.
I'd partly delayed my ride as the nice chemist lady told me to get there after 10.30am, and as it was 10.30am when I set off, so I decided I should take a bit longer just to ensure the pills had arrived, so that was now done.
11.15am. I got to the chemist. Unfortunately, my pills hadn't arrived.
"I'm very sorry about that," said the nice chemist lady. "Would you like me to post them, or drop them into you once they arrive?"
Days off, I thought. It makes me do some exercise riding here, I also thought. "That's okay," I say. "I'll drop over tomorrow to get them."
"Oh, okay," she says.
The sun is shining as I get back on my bike.
I ride around the back of the shops, down Holden Street to Bennett Street, it’s all housing commission around there > Park Street > Ivan Street which is the wrong street, one street too soon, but you know the one thing you can always bank on in Fitzroy if you take the wrong turn, there will be, if nothing else, a lane way to get you through, and there is. Ug gug gug gug gug gug gug over the bluestones to Apperley Street and the bike track. Across Scotchmer Street, where the cars give way to the crossing, across Alfred Crescent where the crossing gives way to the cars, can’t anyone else see how confusing that is? Through the Edinburgh Gardens. Down Napier Street, who knew that was Napier Street. I stand at the pedestrian crossing at Alexandria Parade with a school group, teenagers nearly adults. Standing! Standing! Will the traffic ever stop I wonder? Will the lights ever change? Then it is right onto Alexandria Parade, left into Young Street, right into Cecil Street and then to Brunswick Street.
I go to Sacred Heart Op shop in 433 Brunswick Street. Oh, why not? I'm on the first of two days off, I can do what I like.
I get a Karen Black movie. I contemplate a painting of a woman looking directly at the artist, but decide against it. You are on your bike, you idiot, how would you get it home?
Sam makes wraps for lunch. They are big and I am not hungry after the enormous muffin I'd already eaten unbeknownst to Sam. I should have just told him, but I didn't. It must be some childhood trauma stopping me saying so. He makes me two. I tell him I only want one, but he'd already made it, so he cuts it up and we have half each.
After that I feel a little sick like I have eaten too much.
It's gym day today, and I didn't go this morning, due to the ride north to get my pills. I simultaneously feel bloated-sick and sleepy lazy-full, but early afternoon I make myself go to the gym. Don't put it off, I say to myself. Just go, it is exactly what you need you piggy pig pig. And I do.
There are a couple of serious gym heads there. They are lifting enormous weights, in-between each exercise they are both glued to their phones. They both seem to walk around in circles as they look at their phones. I wanted to use one of the machines, but one of the muscle Mary's doing circles glued to his screen said he was using the machine and then continued to walk in circles. We are doomed as a species, I think.
By late afternoon, I had everything done, and I lay on the couch waiting for dinner after which I passed out on the couch for the evening. Not exactly sure why that is happening? Perhaps it is the 5am wake up I have been doing lately?
I have had diarrhoea since Saturday. I am sure you probably don't want to know that, but it has been going on for 5 days and that is too long and I needed to get it sorted.
I was up early, 5am. I just wake up early now a days, probably something to do with falling asleep on the couch at night, but I also just get up early now a days.
I make some coffee, of course. I intend to call my doctor when they open at 8.30am, as that is when they allocate the cancellations from the day before. Otherwise, I can't get an appointment with my doctor's practice for 2 weeks normally. I tell him, I am sure that is just great for you and your new Jaguar, but it doesn't do the rest of us any good.
I sign into their online booking just to see if the cancellations are up on it. There is one appointment available for today, amongst the 10, or so, doctors, at 10.30am, so I take that. Of course, it is for my medical nemesis, the only doctor in the practise with whom I have had difficulties, but it is the only appointment, so what can I do?
I ride my bike to the surgery.
La Nemesis wants me to do a sample and have it tested, but I want more than that. I want drugs to fix the problem now.
I tell him I shit myself, which I had. I forgot, and thought I was just farting, and there was follow through, and it was disgusting. After that pearl of information, he gives me antibiotics, and I am much more pleased with that outcome.
I head over to the chemist to get the antibiotics and a couple of other scripts I had to get filled.
The chemist lady gets my pill order together, with me paying, and her handing them to me, at which point she says she didn't have one of the boxes of pills and I'd need to drop in tomorrow to pick that box up.
Oh? Okay, I think, as I like her, she's got character and she's to the point, no bullshit. Besides, it'll get me out in the morning doing some exercise on my bike and I am kind of pleased about that fact, more so than I probably should be.
You know what is interesting about using cash now a days? I so often get a discount on my purchases because shops don't have the change to give to me. So, not only am I not paying bank fees, I am often getting a discount.
And it really isn't hard to get cash from an ATM. I hardly ever go to get cash specifically, I normally walk past an ATM somewhere in my travels during the week, and I just withdraw it. It really isn't difficult. We've just gotten out of that mindset.
I started specifically trying to use cash when I saw that the bakery, that I go to more often than most shops, passed on the bank charges for me to pay. And I thought, fuck that.
Maybe I am more tightarse than most people, but it really takes no extra effort not to pay the banks any more money than is necessary.
I worked all day. It's the end of my work cycle, so I am just pulling all of that together.
We had a meeting, yesterday, and we were reminded about remote working schedules that we spoke about in last week's meeting.
What? In last week's meeting? What discussion? What remote work schedules? I didn't miss any meeting, when did we have that discussion? What are you talking about? How could I have missed that? I know our finance meetings are the best thing since the invention of the sleeping tablet, but... what?
I rode down to see girl trainer in the afternoon. It was 30 degrees, the hottest day this year since winter. It was a good ride. I started out with my hoodie on, because you know sometimes it's not as hot as it seems when you are riding, but that wasn't the case. The sun was hot, I had to take my hoodie off and stuff it in my back pack.
Girl trainer had new exercises for me and lots of questions. We had a great work out. It was nice to see her. It was our last face to face training session. And from next week's catch up we'll go to monthly contact. And after that, we're done. I'm being weaned off like a fat girl with cake.
That was Tuesday.
It was just a Monday, what can I say. I was at my desk early in the day.
Coffee in hand, do I need to say?
The people weren't too annoying, they weren't too awful all day. We all seemed to just get on with it, yay.
We had our team meeting early afternoon, it is always a snooze, it is always too long. Don't they realise that meetings, aren't the way to go. We all tune out, while the talkative have their say. The ones that are paid to go on, and on.
I signed out early, well, I signed in early in the day. So it was only fair that it was early that I went away.
It was a gorgeous afternoon, the hottest we've had so far this year, post winter, of course. I took the dogs for a walk around 3, and that was me done for the day, as far as work goes, anyway.
And what of today?
I read about Clarkson having his heart operated on. I read about Pocock telling Dutton he's a dope.
The Middle East kept killing each other. Is there any hope?
Tollroads in Australia are keeping us all poor. I avoid them as a matter of principle, the double tax of toll roads stink.
Lydia Thorpe had her say with the king, people should have their say, I think.
The conservatives in Brisbane are telling lies about crime to get the people to vote, there's a surprise.
Celebrities keep publishing children's books at the expense of real writers.
King Conker’ cleared of cheating at World Conker Championships, thank fuck for that.
Elon is still being an overbearing twat.
