2nd Day At The Gym

Is there something wrong with the way I tie bows, in shoes, and track pants and the like? I've got to wonder? 

So often when I undo the bows they go into fucking knots. I'm left struggling to get out of my shoes, or my track pants. It drives me nuts.

It is even worse when I am dying to piss and the bow knots. Grrr! I am left struggling with my pants while while bouncimg from one foot to the other.

It just happened now when I was changing for the gym.

Yes, I am going to the gym, now I have my pants unknotted. Two days in a row,

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining.

Back To The Gym

I continue generating images for my 2013 blog posts. I’ve completed a lot of them. Is this, as they say, the waste of time olympics? Maybe? But, I continue. It feels like I am changing it to how it should have been in the first place, even if noone goes back there to look.

Mid morning, the morning is half gone, just like that. Slipped away. Where, as they say, did the time go?

I think about the gym. It’s true I’ve gotta go to the gym. I can’t go on like this. I’ve gotta go, or stop paying for it. I never thought I'd be one of those people who continues to pay his gym membership when he isn't going? But I am, there you go. It's been since new year.

I have to make myself go. Going is the correct option.

I look at my gym app to see if that gets me in the mood.

My gym app stopped working. I think, if I get my gym app working, I’ll go. 

It says I need to input my code. I have a code? I don’t have a code. Did I ever have a code? I guess, I did. 

There is an option that says, if you don’t have a code, so I hit that and it asks if you forgot your code, or you never had a code? I push I’ve forgotten my code. They email me a code, straight away. Instantly. How easy was that?

I punch the code in and my gym app starts working, just like that.

So, that means I have to go.

I go get changed. I find my water bottle. I get my headphones. A towel. And I head out the door.

Then I was on the exercise bike with my head phones on with Guy Sebastian singing. There I was like 3 months hadn't past at all. Easy. What had I been thinking these last few months? 

It was good. I liked it instantly. The music played. 

There was a buzz-cut blonde guy exercising in front of me, so I could watch him. He had great legs. When I was on the rowing machine he came and exercise over me, and his t-shirt road up, putting his undies elastic on display, I couldn't help but look.

A middle aged woman in grey gym clothes parks herself on the chest press and doesn't move the whole time I am working out. It crossed my mind to ask her if she was okay? But people do that, sit on a machine for an inordinate amount of time, usually looking at their phones. Although, she wasn't looking at her phone.

There is also a troll, short, fat, ugly, middle aged, no neck, face just joins to his chest, probably doing gym on doctor's advice.

Half way through my workout, a very neat, I'd guess uptight, 30 something chick arrives perfectly decked out in activewear, with a neat ponytail. She'd have a professional husband named Brett who'd give it to her missionary style on a Friday once the week is done. The thought made me chuckle to myself.

The hour was up quickly, my routines was done, it was so easy, it was good.

I headed out into the street all sweaty where the sun was warm and it felt good.

I got back to the couch and my laptop.

I guess, I'd better go again tomorrow.

Trans Charming

Brun stops to say hello to someone sitting outside at Kent Street. That person was trans. You know, I don’t get the problem with trans people, I always find there is something kind of charming about trans people, maybe it is the struggle to know yourself that they’ve had to deal with, and coming out the other side, perhaps, knowing themselves better than most people know themselves. 

Is it that fully-known-about-themselves quality that is kind of charming?

I’ll call the trans charming.

Monday In The Office

I go to work early, so I can leave early, that is the only reason I go in early. There is no dedication to the job involved here. I go to work early because I just naturally get up early now. There is no need to set an alarm. 

I go to work early, for the lesser reason, of getting quite a few hours on my own to work alone without all the other annoying yappy people. Leaving early also gives me many hours where I don't have to deal with the other people too.

Win, win.

It was still dark when I left home.

There was a woman on the tram who had her scarf hanging over the top of her head covering her face completely.

There were two Asian ladies sitting behind me, neither of whom took a breath as they both talked at once and at the same time, continuously.

I had to move seats, I felt like I’d got on a twilight tram to hell.

It was so nice and peaceful walking down Collins Street in the dark and cool of the morning after that.

Big Ange was in first and we got to talking about how appliances don’t last how they used to, after I told her I got my fourth kitchen tap in four years. Big Ange moves a bit like a truckie, but she’s nice, I like her.

After that, I put Chaka Khan on and ignored everyone, until the Big Poo came in at 8am. He was surprisingly not chatty. He’s usually rah, rah, rah first thing in the morning.

Don’t know why. Perhaps, fingers crossed, he has my redundancy ready to go, and he felt guilty. Couldn’t face me, you know how it goes. That thought made me smile for a while.

Boris wasn’t in until after 9am, she is never in until after 9am.

The Midget cancelled our catch up, the reason I am in the office, in the first place. I was shocked. Not! Haha! (I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely shocked?) That’s how it goes, hey? Do as I say, not as I do.

The rest of the morning has gone smoothly behind my force field of music.

How long until 3pm?

Strumming my fingers on my desk.

Nyr! I don’t think I am going to do anything else today.

2pm. Boris goes into the exec meeting, which usually lasts an hour, so 2.15pm. I decide to go home. Fuck it. I don't want to be here anyway.

You think you are witnessing my slow, corporate demise? No such luck, Chico. It's very unlikely anyone will say anything. 

It's true my deteriorating attitude has cost me a bonus this year (even if I got an apology and the promise of a bonus next year... yeah, whatever) but who cares, life is short.

2.35pm. I am home.

Otto barks from the inside of the door like a big, bad guard dog. I bark back at him from the outside, while I search for my wallet in my satchel, which has my key in it. Otto barks some more. Sam opens the front door before I find my key with a 'look' on his face. 

"Honey."

Now there is a great work day.

Sunday

What should we do today? It’s not like we can spend our whole life sitting around on the couches staring at our screens, now is it? Or is it? no, no, no.

So what to do? Charlie is at work, he’s working quite a lot at the restaurant, so Sam doesn’t have to get lunch for him. So yes, let’s go out.

We’ll walk to our kitchen on Lyon Street and have lunch there. Of course, when in doubt head to the kitchen in Carlton. It has become our default setting.

So we head upstairs to get ready. I look in the mirror and my hair is all over the place. 

Sam says, "Unless you wanna have a haircut?"

I look back in the mirror. I put water on my hands and try to sort my hair disaster.

"Yes, yes, I could have a haircut," I say.

 "Okay then let’s walk into the city."

 "Let’s walk into the city."

We saddle up the beasts and we walk into the city.

Sam and I have got out of sync with our haircuts. Last time ugly cute hairdresser cut my hair really short, so I didn’t need a haircut when Sam had one. So it’ll just be me having a haircut.

It’s grey and cold outside. Not cold enough that you can’t go into the city and have a haircut and then eat outside of the table with your favourite bulldogs, it's not that cold, but nearly, it’s nearly that cold.

The sky is grey, the day is grey, no sunshine, no sunshine for you today

We get to the hair salon and one of the hairdressers is waiting so I’m straight in the chair @12.10pm starts. 12.15pm he finishes, and I’m done, good, love a quick haircut like that. I'm not one for wanting to sit in the chair for too long staring at myself in the mirror. Nah. It's a horror show.

Then it is off to David’s soup kitchen.

There is a loon in Bourke . A drunk old man. Maybe homeless. Screaming out.

There is a loon in Russell Street, a middle aged woman in a huge white dressing gown, who does a sort of crouch down and squat then what kind resembles a Haka. The she walks off swearing like a sailor.

I have tomato based soups. Sam has the signature soup, he gets cranky when I ask him what that is.

12:35pm. Our soup is ready.

The dogs are restless all through lunch and won't settle, I don't know why.

An older woman with Menopausal red henna hair stops and pats the dogs. She says that are magnificent.

"I bet they get lots of pats?" she says smiling.

The way she is bending over to the dogs, I can see right down her top to her pendulous breasts hanging down in some sort of grey foundation garment. It is off putting.

"Yes, lots of pats," I say.

It is busy in the city. Sam says it is because its Mother's Day. I guess that is about the only benefit of having a dead mother, you don't have to observe Mother's day.

We finish our lunch and walk home.

Then it is screens on the couches for the rest of the afternoon.

Lovely.

David Attenborough

Happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough, a great man, who I wish has a lovely day.

Cold Snap

My 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 nearly 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 outside 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, in fact, it has been said I'd make a great arsonist the way I can get a fire burning. Usually.

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 had low level aches.

Sam didn't appear.

I lay on the couch for the rest of the day after our near choking incident with two bulldog hot water bottles.

I re-wrote my blog entries in the morning. I watched YouTube in the afternoon.

The weather was pretty wet and lousy all day.