Cold Snap

Day off. I was cold, despite having a bulldog on either side of me on the couch.

There has been a cold change in Melbourne with lots of rain, after a month of unseasonably warm, climate change induced hotter weather.

Mid morning, I thought, this is ridiculous, I don't have to be cold, suspecting the cold adversely affects my sore shoulder, which seems to have inexplicably flared up again, so I lit only our second open fire for the year.

As I said, it had been raining for the previous 24 hours so, naturally, the wood was wet.

The fire failed spectacularly, managing only to belch smoke out into the lounge room at an alarming rate while it spluttered and died, after which I had to open all the doors and windows to let the great plumes of smoke escape, as the air purifier started to scream hysterically, and the now freaked out Otto escaped to his kennel.

I chucked some paper in next to the dying coals and lit it and thought I'd cleared the chimney of cold air, which was stopping the warm air from drawing.

So, I coaxed Otto back inside. I threw another fire lighter at the fire, and more twigs and small pieces of wood, and it kind of spluttered back to life in a very poor way. And when it tentatively caught for a second time, that only seemed to cause another room filling belch of acrid smoke to escape out into the room, filling it again, which necessitated me opening all the windows and doors, yet again.

Someone call the fire brigade. No, don't. You know you have to pay for that.

So, after about half an hour of this fucking about, I was standing in a room open to the poor weather outside, colder than I was when I started out to light a fire, with some blackened sticks and kindling smouldering rather than burning in the fire place.

Good job, Christian. I don't think I have ever had a fire that has been so reluctant to burn. Wet wood? I swear I am usually a really good fire lighter.

I was just waiting for Sam to come down from upstairs to ask me what the fuck I am doing?

Over an hour later, I was probably marginally warmed than I was when I started. And my shoulder still low level aches.

Sam didn't appear.

The World Today

 

 

Monday In The Office

I was in the office today. Sad Face. 

I woke up late, 6.15am, unusual for me. I never set alarms now, I just wake up.

I had to jump out of bed and get ready, there was nothing else for it.

I was ready in five minutes. I left the house in ten minutes.

I ran for a tram that I nearly caught, but didn't. I ran after it until I was out of breath. I caught the next tram to come along.

I was in the office 6.45am.

Not bad, half an hour from waking up to me sitting at my desk turning my laptop on. Pretty good, I thought.

I still beat Big Ange in, who is normally in after me.

AtAboyMuscles was in after Big Ange.

No one knew I cheated the company out of half an hour, today, when I still left at 3pm. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

Deep Heat

We ran out of Voltaren cream, so Sam went and bought Deep Heat.

Sam is fine, no permanent damge. There is just some moaning and groaning and swearing to a god neither of us believe in, when he gets up, straightens up, or stands up, but it seems to be getting better each time. So, we're not claiming disability, or destined to live on a widow's pension, just yet.

But Deep Heat? I hate Deep Heat. I hate the smell of it on my hands when I have to rub it on his back. You just can't get that smell off your skin with one wash. I hate the smell of it lingering in the air making the whole place smell like a sports change room.

Funny, because it takes me back to my time as a kid when I used to go with my dad to cricket on Saturdays. I used to sit on the sidelines and score in the big green book.

I used to go back with him to the club rooms afterwards when all the players from the three Bentleigh teams used to meet back at home base to celebrate, or commiserate, and drink beer and shower and get changed before the women came to the club rooms, usually with food to feed their men.

There was me, young, gay, son sitting in the middle of it all those men in those club rooms smelling of Deep Heat and liniment and sweat,  drinking beer and showering and walking around in the nude, uninhibited, dressed only in their undies, laughing and pissing about. It used to cause a bit of deep heat in me, let me tell you, when I got home that night. The Love brothers. Jimmy Glass. Pete Robby. Jeremy Laird.

You'd think I'd like the smell of Deep Heat, because of that. Transported back there into that world of men once again on the memory of a scent. An olfactory turn on. In the budding-gay Tardis of smells.

You'd think? But I don't. I hate it. The stuff stinks.

Sam Crashes To The Ground

We were taking the dogs for a walk, in the afternoon, I guess it was around 4pm, that sort of thing. I was faffing about being the last person to leave the house, as is my want. Oh, I don't know why? I guess I am just the more relaxed one of us two.

To be fair, Sam usually just announces its time for a walk and then he puts his shoes on and heads straight out the front door to wait. Strait to it. Usually, Brun, and possibly Otto, will wait out the front with him, although Otto, more often than not, will wait inside the house in the hallway as he has a want to be the last to leave the house.

So, I headed out the front last thing and Sam is sitting on the ground.

“Why are you sitting on the path?”

“Help me up will you?”

“But why are you down there?”

“Just help me up.”

“Help you up, old man, what are you talking about?”

“Give me your hand.”

“Okay. What’s going on?”

“Oh, ah, shit.” 

“What’s wrong?”

“Otto knocked me over.”

“Otto did what? How?”

“Otto was in the hallway, he saw a dog walk past the gate, he ran to the gate knocking me off my feet as he went.”

“Otto did?”

“Oh, my back. Oh. Ah!” Sam got to his feet. He looked at me.

“What happened?”

“I was standing on the front step looking at my phone one minute, the next minute I crashed down on the step, my back hit on the step.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is your back okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

He had the shell-shocked look on his face of someone who has gone through something they haven’t quite worked out.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

Sam shuffled off inside without looking back.

“I bought those anti-inflammatories this morning, take two.”

“Okay.”

“You have to take them with food, apparently.”

“Okay.”

I picked up the dog leads and took them for a walk.

As I walked the dogs, I wondered if I should have stayed with Sam longer. You know, was he okay? Was he damaged worse than we thought? Was he damaged worse than he thought? What if he had broken vertebrae? Cracked one? Chipped one? Imaging if he was permanently damaged? Those things happen to people all the time. People get permanent injuries from the simplest of mishaps. It happenes every day.

I text him. You oaky?

Annoyingly, I got back, I don’t know, again.

I kept walking with the dogs.

I text him again. Do you need to go to hospital? If you do, we can go when I get back? Or I can come back now?

I don’t know, he replied.

Thinking about it later, he was a bit in shock, I guess. I started to hurry the dogs along so we could get hime again. If anyone knows anything about bulldogs, you can't hurry them along.

I got back and Sam was on the couch with a blanket over him. He was asleep. (not so unusual for Sam, he has the ability to just drop off to sleep in an instant) I stood there and watched his chest go up and down just to check he was still breathing. Okay, I can be dramatic too.

He eventually woke up. He wanted me to put cream on his back. He said he couldn’t roll over. I helped him as best I could. He called out in pain as I rolled him. I rubbed Voltaren cream into his back.

He wanted his track pants. I had to pull his jeans off and dress him in his track pants. None of this alleviated my concern about him.

Luckily, we had leftover pasta in the fridge, which I could just microwave for dinner.

Sam said he fell onto the front step backwards, but he fell kind of on his back, but more on his side, and not flat on his spine, which I am thinking is lucky.

We called David who was medically trained at uni in his previous life, and asked questions, he said as long as his not getting sharp stabbing pain, he should be okay. 

“Keep taking anti-inflammatories. Tell me the name of what you have?”

We told him what we had.

“Take a couple of Panadol’s as well for the pain.”

"Okay," said Sam.

"You have to treat the inflammation straight way," said David.

Sam complained every time he had to move after that, but he said he could move fine, and it felt like everything was working properly, just painfully. 

I think he's okay.

He started bossing me around, which I take as a good sign, back to normal.

The State of the World