Getting My Arse Into Gear

It hasn’t stopped raining since I got up, it hasn’t stopped raining the whole time. So, so much for the nice weather that we have been having for quite a few weeks.

I’m lying on the couch with both dogs watching bullshit on YouTube. Bruno crawls up behind my back like a back pack, Otto curls up around my feet. 

I have to go to the gym, which I put off from yesterday. Too much time on the couch, it is true. The morning, the day, is ticking away. I feel so unmotivated. Really, nothing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada.

Okay. I’m going. I'm getting up and going. I need to get the gym done this morning. It would be too painful to let it go until the afternoon.

Okay. The rain has stopped. Now I am going. It's 11am. I’m going now. I am getting up and going. I am dragging my arse off this couch... now.

The New Fridge Is Coming

The new fridge is coming today, so we have had to move all the house around so they can get the damn thing in, terrace houses being what terrace houses are and all. And, of course, they have to get the old one out. The company was very particular about wanting to retrieve the old fridge. I guess it is for an investigation, do you think? Research as to why it failed? Surely, they don't think we, actually, want it. No, I insist you take it away. 

Do they think we are going to put it on eBay?

They say they are coming between 8am and midday. 8am and midday, so when in that time period do we empty the fridge and freezer onto the bench? I ask you? They haven't promised a message when they approach the house. We'll be there in 10 minutes, or some such thing. So, I guess they will just have to wait while we empty the perishables into the bins provided.

We're hoping the delivery guys have some idea on what and how to do it. The spaces are tight in this place. I think I am going to have to remove the lounge room door to facilitate the whole operation.

Anyway, here we sit anxiously with the lounge room pulled apart in readiness, with the dogs sniffing all of the moved furniture as if they are trying to work out what exactly what is going on.

The back door is open, the gorgeous morning air is permeating all of our nostrils. It is sweetly perfumed with everything that is good and great in the world.

The time drags.

Loli inexplicably sends me a Barry Manilow video, Looks Like We Made it. I wonder if Barry Manilow has died, but according to google he hasn't.

Sam regales me with the latest dickhead thing Elon Musk has done/said. The guy is a jerk. I try not to be interested in that first class idiot, but like any good car crash... he wants to destroy the liberal world because he can’t accept one of his sons is a transwoman. Grow up dickhead.

A warm breeze blows in from outside.

David calls me. "I didn't think you were talking to me any more?"

"What?"

"You never answer my calls?"

"Some voodoo gypsy curse has been cast upon me and I am falling a sleep on the couch every night at 7pm."

"What?"

"I think I have developed narcolepsy," I say. 

"Narcolepsy," he repeats.

"This morning, I saw that you called last night. I was going to call you back at 6am."

"Yes, well, good luck with that," he says. "I was having a narcoleptic episode of my own at that hour."

9am. The fridge guy calls. They'll be here in half an hour.

We'd emptied the old fridge into 4 washing baskets. We re-arranged the lounge room so they could extract the old fridge and deliver the new fridge with ease.

6 months of a faltering 3 year old fridge was about to come to an end.

9.30am. The fridge guys arrive. They take the handles off the old fridge. They say the swap over won't be a problem. "We'll just take the doors off if the spaces are too tight."

They were at the truck preparing the new fridge to bring it in. We were ready for the swap. Everything was about to happen. The dogs were barking from the front hallway wanting to know what they were missing out on. All was all nearly over. When the two guys came back in from the truck and said, "Sorry, we have a problem. I'm sorry to tell you this but the new fridge had a dent in the door."

Everyone stop what they are doing. Everything ground to a halt. It was like being on the edge of an orgasm but never getting there.

I nearly said, Don't worry, we'll take the dented door. But as soon as I thought that my sensible voice said, don't be ridiculous.

Everything was suddenly cancelled. "Sorry," the guys said. 

Put everything back how it was. So close.

Now we have to wait until next week when another replacement fridge will be delivered.

Hump Day Arvo

10.15am. I have all the work I have to do finished. I started at 6am, so that’s that done.

10.30am. I manage to stir up Otto as I am getting ready to go to the gym, putting on my shoes becomes a fight for each shoe. He’s adorable, we wrestle on the study floor.

10.45am. I go to the gym. I must stop calling it the grim. Think positively, you are supposed to be keeping this up. You are supposed to be setting up habits for a life time. Is that what girl trainer says?

It is really nice and warm outside. 

There is some sweaty fat guy in the walk-in foyer area yapping on his phone loudly. Another one of the annoying people, I think.

I get on the exercise bike and just as I start to peddle, I realise I’d forgotten my stupid watch data collector thing. Grrr! I’m sure I groaned out loud. I have to wear it so it sends the data to girl trainer. She takes this stuff seriously.

So, I get off the bike and go home and get it.

The sweaty fat guy in the walk-in foyer area is still yapping on his phone loudly. Another one of the annoying people, I think for a second time.

11am. As I head back up the stairs who do I see but the fat sweaty guy, he has taken the bike I usually use, of course he has. I get on the bike next to him, reciting a positive affirmation silently in my head for his immanent death. Take my exercise bike, will you? He says something about the bikes being closer together than they have ever been. I don’t answer.

I’m not really one for chit chat in the gym. I’m there to get something done.

I get peddling.

He’s grunting and groaning and making the bike squeak with his heft. His stomach bulges over his waistband as he peddles, kind of doughy. He’s looking at pokies on his phone, sitting on the display panel of the bike, the phone screen showing the colourful four boxes spinning around continually stopping for a match.

All the guys in the gym were in black. The blonde-haired top heavy guy with the big chest and arms and skinny legs. There was another guy who looked like Sherlock Homes from Elementary, who strode about with big steps between exercises. There was the young curly haired guy who sat in the leg extension machine looking at his phone for hours in between reps the last time I was in the gym.

The guy’s kind of walk around each other in a silent gym dance. They are all there to get a job done. They don't talk, they barely acknowledge each other.

The fat sweaty guy who pinched my exercise bike didn’t do weights after he finished on the bike.

11:53am. I’m done. The sun is really warm outside when I step into it from under the shop verandas. Do I feel good? I try to decide, as I walk home again? Do I? I don’t know.

I ate leftover nachos for lunch.

I get back to work. Not that too much work comes my way, just a bit, it’s intermittent. I find some mistakes, kind of stumble across them, my mistakes, so I fix them.

I wander outside into the sunshine. I water my plants. I watch YouTube for a while.

The afternoon sails away.

3:14pm. We take the Bulldogs for a walk. It’s quite a warm day. It is t-shirt time today, perhaps the first time for the year. That is an ominous sign of summer, now isn’t it? It is sad summer has become ominous, and yet we’re still not taking climate change seriously, not all of us, not collectively.

It’s really warm, the sun is hot, as we turn into Nicholson Street. I’m not sure if I’m ready for hot weather yet. It’s too soon. Do you think that is odd? Maybe it is? I like mild weather. Climate change is real, after all, and summer becomes a threat.

At least there’s a breeze blowing up the street and we walk.

Nicholson Street, we cut across to Brunswick Street to the dog’s water dish for them to have a drink. We cut across to Smith Street to the Japanese Pantry. Bruno keeps lying in the middle of the footpath, as we wait out the front. He doesn’t care. The only thing he cares about is the cool footpath on his stomach. Otto keeps tying me his lead as I tried to move Bruno. I nearly fall over at one point. I wonder if anyone notices?

Soon enough Sam reappears

Then Bruno, Otto, and I are waiting outside Woolies while Sam  shops. It’s hotter today than any other day, you can feel summer in the air. I’m not ready for hot weather, I might have to take my Bulldogs and head somewhere cool. I’m sweating. Both bulldogs are lying out across the paving.

Some chick just walked into Woolies with a scarf around her neck and fur-lined, knee length boots. What the hell is wrong with her? Perhaps she’s a Queenslander? 

A bunch of people stop and pat the dogs.

Sam reappears and we walk home.

4pm. I’m back at my work desk. A number of problems have been emailed to me, from Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. I wonder if they have conspired to stop me signing out of work early? I chuckle to myself at the thought. I work nearly to 6pm sorting them out. I sign off in time to watch the misery hour.

We eat Japanese pancakes for dinner.

Later, I fall asleep on the couch.

Snoring

I was up early, you know, because I'd slept weird hours yesterday.  5.15am. It's one of the downsides of falling asleep on the couch in. front of the teev in the evenings, as lovely as that is.

I made coffee and signed into work. I tried not to send any emails with 5-something-am as the time, I didn't want to look like a complete weirdo. Ha ha. I guess we all spend a lot of our lives trying not to look like a weirdo, needlessly.

What is it they say? The weirdos will inherit the earth? No, I guess that’s not what they say? That’s just the more interesting take on our dystopian future, I guess, climate change being what it is and what it is going to do to us. I think we are cooked, just quietly, but no one wants to hear that. 

I wonder if the end, when it comes, will be a surprise to us all?

"Why didn't anyone tell us?" You can just hear people saying that, now can't you... as the sea starts lapping around our feet, what you can see of it, that is, through the haze of the poisoned atmosphere.

People will be attempting to sue for compensation, as bits of the sky are falling down on their heads.

I have plenty of time to think when I get up early.

The first thing Sam said to me when he got up was, "Have you been up all night?"

"No, honey."

"Did you come back to bed?"

"Yes, honey."

"I didn't hear you."

"You were snoring so loud the people over the road heard you." I replied.

He looked coy and then headed to the kitchen.

Actually, all 3 of them snore, Sam, Bruno and Otto, it's like some demented chain saw jamboree. Still, I am used to it now. And I wouldn't have it any other way. It's familiar, even comforting. The things you get used to.

I can't help but think that people who are kept awake by snoring are pussies. But then, I sleep the sleep of the dead. Nothing wakes me up.

Tuesday

Tuesday? Sam went to the office. I was home alone with the woofs. Oh, Charlie was home too, so, I guess, not exactly home alone. He left midday for parts unknown. He doesn't tell me what he is doing. I'm lucky if I get a grunt out of him. Twenty year old boys being what they are. The economy of speech is something truly amazing to behold.

I didn't go to the gym. And I ate a coffee scroll thinking I would go to the gym. So, why not? Shrug. Too much fun being home on my own. Would you believe I was enjoying work so much... okay, you wouldn't believe that. How about I was coerced into collecting data on my fellow employees in a top secret spying missing for the CEO? No? Well, no, that's not true either. There are far nastier people in the company for that, you know, take your pick of anyone in HR. Ha ha.

I just decided I'd go tomorrow. No great mystery to it. Why do today what you can put off to tomorrow. I've always said that. Ha ha, to my detriment through life. Actually, it wasn't until I discovered the exact opposite was true that I started achieving success.

Anyway...

I did take the dogs for a walk around midday. The sun was shining, it was a nice day. The two of them ambled along like they had the rest of their lives to get to the end of it, but that is the usual thing. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. 

Of course, Sam insisted on going for a second walk when he got home. I must stop calling Bruno fat.

I fell asleep on the couch after diner, as I have been doing lately. It is like some ancient voodoo sleeping course has been cast upon me sometime around June?

Then I was up half the night because I'd slept half the night, just earlier, on the couch, you know. When I got into bed, I just knew sleep was going to evade me. Sam did his usual trick of falling asleep half way through me talking to him.

"Sam?"

Snore.

I tried to sleep for a while longer, but I knew sleep wasn't coming, so I got up.

Monday Morning

The cows aren't happy. The milk isn't frothing. My morning coffee is ruined. The outlook for today is bleak.

And Monday morning too! It is enough to make you shit!

The coffee tastes dreadful. I check that the milk isn't off, but it isn't. Maybe, it is just that time of year when the cows don't get enough clover, or too much clover, or some fucken thing. All I know is that my coffee tastes like shit! And it is kind of depressing looking down into the cup and it kind of looks grey and oily, if you know what I mean.

Sam said we should take the milk back. I told him I didn't think how it froths is a returnable offence. He shrugged. I should have just gone with it, I guess. Sam tends to get that sort of thing done. Me, not so much. And I could have had good coffee. I could have. Sad face.

Anyway, on with the show, coffee, or not. Monday morning, things to do. Ah, Monday morning with no coffee, it should be illegal.

Lovely Weekend

The last two days we have taken the bulldogs down to the Yarra and thrown ball for them on the large expanse of grass that is the off-lead area by the river. Bruno is ball obsessed and Ottos is almost the same. The two of them have charged up and down after the ball and looked so adorable doing it. Just a couple of matching boof-heads barrelling backwards and forwards in the long green grass. And the weather has been so gorgeous these last two days, this last week, or so, it has been an absolute joy to stand out in it, especially with two beautiful dogs to enjoy.

Yesterday, we bought pork rolls on the way home and everyone admire Bruno and Otto at the pork roll shop. 

One handsome guy was especially impressed, he and his two sons and his Asian wife. He told me the dogs he'd owned and he encouraged his sons to pat Bruno and Otto and not be scared. His two boys will probably be gorgeous when they grow up as half anglo and half Asian kids so often are.

Today, I picked up potting mix on the way home at Bunnings. Our Bunnings has an underground car park, and we took the GTI because it needed a run and someone, par for the course, told me to slow down as I drove through the car park because people can't differentiate between the sound a car makes and the speed the car is travelling. The GTI is loud as it has a sports exhaust. And people are just stupid sometimes as the sound of its exhaust echoed in the under ground structure, I don't know, makes them scared?

A few years ago Sam bought 3 Japanese Maples from a friend of ours who is always trying to scrape a living together. We didn't need 3 Japanese maples, but he bought them to help our mate out. And I have been repotting them ever since, which is why I needed the potting mix as one of them needed a bigger pot.

Now we have two large Japanese Maples, the 3rd one was always smaller, in our court yard, now beautifully potted up I might add, which are lovely, but, you know, who needs 2 large Japanese Maples in a court yard, with a 3rd catching up every year.

We might sell them on eBay, eventually. Maybe. I have sold a couple of plants on eBay that have got too big. We'll see.

Now I have been on the couch watching YouTube, with gorgeous summery air blowing in the back door. That taste and smell of summer coming always makes the day feel lighter and easier.

The bulldogs are sprawled out across the lounge room floor completely exhausted from their park activity.

And that's the weekend done.

Early Saturday

I dreamed I was doing deliveries in a delivery van, one of those small, European vans, like a Peugeot Partner or a Citroen Kangoo. We were delivering parts, they seemed like electronic parts, is that because of all those endless robot clips Sam has been showing me lately? (Sam is fascinated with robots, me, not so much. I can’t really see what good they are going to do, you know, other than playthings for the very rich, or autonomous war machines) But it was the vans that were under scrutiny, that were being watched. ‘They’ were looking for one van in particular and all our vans were being checked to see if it was the van for which ‘they’ were looking. It was all very tense. We all felt like we were being accused of something?

4.45am. I woke up. I had to move Bruno. He had gone to sleep between my legs last night. In the night Bruno and Otto had moved into a position where I was pushed into an S shape. Yes, both 30 kilo bulldogs sleep on our bed now. It wasn’t the shape, although it was that too, it was the temperature of two bulldogs, one snuggled into my legs, and one snuggled into my back, both pushing me so I couldn’t move, contained in one spot, and I was overheating, which is what really woke me up. That and the tension about the delivery van.

I managed to move Bruno and Otto successfully, but by that stage I was awake. I had to throw off the doona to cool down. It was too early, sure, but I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep.

4.55am. I got up. It was still dark outside.

I made coffee.

5am. I was on the couch under the big pink blanket. I don’t really mind getting up early as I always think it is a time when I can write. However...

5.30am. Milo comes in. He’s always really visibly excited when the bulldogs aren’t around. He jumps up on the couch with me and rubs himself all over me. It’s kind of annoying really, as it is relentless. He's manic to get his moment, very un-cat-like, I tell him. I lie down on the couch and fashion the big pink blanket into a nest between my legs and Milo gets in there and curls up. And he is warm, he is soft, and he feels little and delicate.

This morning, I fell into the Facebook rabbit hole until 7am, the hours just disappeared until it was suddenly daylight outside. And no writing got done. I was watching the Facebook shorts, which just keep going, and the shorts kept showing me handsome guys, often in shorts, and Karen Walker, and I couldn’t tear myself away. Is that what social media is designed to do? Distract us from life? 

Okay, 5am there isn’t much life going on, but, I did YouTube, too much yesterday arvo, where I was far too interested in the US election, watching all the clips on Donald Trump like I am watching a car crash to the end. Why is that? We, as a nation, never used to be so interested in US politics. Did we? Is it because it is just such a potential horror story unfolding?

So many wasted hours.

I even bought myself a number of novels, recently, on my Kindle to move away from this YouTube thing, and I must remember them and read instead, I must remind myself to do that. Disappear into a good story, not some mindless nonsense. I know after reading good writing, my writing is so much better, it inspires me, consciously, or unconsciously, I can even feel it as I write.

Reading is listening and writing is speaking.

Anyway, I think we are going to take the dogs for a run down the river.

I should go for a bike ride too, that would please girl trainer.

Then I can lie on the couch guilt free. And isn't that what exercise is all about?