Oh, Now Where Was I?

Oh, now where was I? Write something, yes. I was going to find that letter to my younger self. Good idea, especially since I've already written it. But, I didn't find it, I'll get to it, but you know, back through the archives, what a head ache. Er! 

It's been an interesting week. End of the financial year and all. Jees, all that work, I had to get done, that I have got done now. Whew! Yay! Pat on the back. Now, you see, it all started last Friday, when I was really putting the old nose to the grindstone and getting stuck in. I'd forgotten how much hard work those not-quite-the-B/Fword can be. I mean to say.

Well, Sam had gone shopping waiting for me to finish working. He was texting me from David Jones telling me that it would be all my fault if he spends his entire year's pay entertaining himself waiting for me to be done. So, in the spirit of the occasion I was making certain promises that I wouldn't, eventually, be able to keep.

Yes, yes, I'll be finished soon. Yes, yes, not long now. Okay, fifteen minutes. Yadda, yadda, yadda, until I finally had to stop and say, you know what, I really need to get this done.

Okay, I'm going home now.

Okay, sorry.

So, I finished what I had to do and headed home an hour, or so, later. All sweet... so I thought.

Saturday, I headed off to see my mum. Apparently, she was dark on me for leaving her in the home, so said my brother and sister-in-law. It didn’t show when I saw her. We got money from the bank and bought a TattsLotto ticket and petrol. We went for a drive in the country to Warrandyte, then we ate pancakes at the pancake parlour.

I looked at her across the wooden table and felt sad. It is sad, watching your mother decline.

I feel kind of let down when I came home. Bored, well? I felt ordinary, everything felt ordinary. Call it staring my own mortality right in the face. 

I should call Sam, I thought. Maybe, I wouldn't be such good company. Shane was away. I might just build a fire and lie on the couch and watch teev mindlessly. That's what I felt like doing, you know, get my centre back, if you like. The V8 super cars were on, I hadn't watched them since I was a kid. It felt comforting, you know, like a glass of warm milk as a little tacker.

Sam text. He was in the city, did I want to catch up? Yes, it felt good, I should have text him, after all.

From the moment he arrived, I could see he was, well, at that stage, troubled.

You see, what I didn't really get was that he didn't head home, the previous night, because of my I-have-to-get-this-finished text, in fact, he misunderstood that text altogether. No, it was becoming apparent twenty four hours later, he went home because he was, well, really pissed off.

I was oblivious.

I could see his point, when it was pointed out to me. Grimace. I put up my case, tried to jolly him out of it. Laughed at the most inappropriate moments, oops. He wasn't buying it. You made me wait around for all that time and then you didn't turn up when you finally said you would.

But, but, but...

I'm going home.

Okay, I thought. Go home. But, actually, I stayed silent, by that stage. I was still taken aback.

And, surprise, surprise, he left.

I lay by the soft glow of the open fire, with the V8's going zoom, zoom and thought, what just happened?

So, I text him, Hey cranky pants?

Again, not one of my finest texts. He text back with anger. Grr! Gritted teeth. I asked him what he wanted me to do. His response was, you had better get your arse over here.

Okay, on my way. I picked up my keys and left for his place, with my tail firmly between my legs. I unreservedly apologised for everything and fell asleep in his arms. Oh, there was some of the other thing in between, smile, but I'm sure you don't want those details. And he cooked me a green curry, more than I deserved, so he said. At midnight I got up and left, as I had to be at Nicholas' early to take him driving.

Nicholas, Tim, Wendy, their next door neighbour and dog lover, and I went driving. Nicholas was to have two instructors, me and Wendy. Probably not ideal.

First stop the market at Fed Square, held in the multi level car park, all grey and concrete without an aspect. Apparently, it is supposed to be something of an upmarket affair, designer and the like. But really, it’s the same kind of tat as you’d find in any market. It was busy. There seemed to be a disproportionate number of people to what was on offer. Primarily, we went to see Tim and Nicholas’s friend’s dog stall, even that only seemed to consist of a few designer dog collars and leads.

I like the green and yellow ceramic jars and the small hands under a glass dome, which turned out to be hand soaps. I thought they were cute. Tim said they were creepy and bordered on paedophilia.

Then we went to Elwood for breakfast/lunch. We all had the big breakfast special of scrambled eggs, except for Tim who had Thai fish cakes. We all said afterwards we wished we’d chosen something different. Although, Elwood was gorgeous.

“Can we pat your Pug?” Nicholas asked a nice lady walking her Pug named Ming. Nicholas smiled broadly as he looked at me. I’d told Nicholas, not so long ago, that of all the small dogs, I quite liked Pugs. Ming was gorgeous, a little character. His little fat head rubbing in the palm of my hand with his snuffly noises was adorable. His owner said he loves attention.

Then we drove down the beach road to the Nepean Hwy, with Wendy and I both telling Nicholas what to do. We drove all the way down to Frankston, It was sunny and warm. There was a mother on the sand at the beginning of the Frankston jetty with two carrot topped kids. A couple of baby rangas, I said. I got chastised as Tim thought the mother would have been able to hear me.

To continue with the dog theme for the day, there was a Shar Pei in front of us, walking up the jetty with his two female owners. I was just about to say to Nicholas that you don’t see a Shar Pei very often when it leans forward and vomited everywhere. There was white frothy foam all over its mouth. I said to the owners, who were grabbing tissues from the baby bag, maybe he’s sea sick. They laughed.

We ate chocolate mousse cake, in the barn-like cafe, that was the size of someone’s head. We needed four spoons to get through it.

We came home and Nicholas suggested we go get pot. I agreed. Seriously, I thought he was kidding – Nicholas had quite for most of this year. The next thing he is on the phone organising it. But we needed something to smoke it out of, so we went to Nicholas’ mums for her spare bong – Nicholas had ditched his. His mum was smoking a bong when we got there. She packed me a pipe, while Nicholas was upstairs.

I ate dinner at Tim and Nicholas’. And my eyes half-closed in that familiar feeling and the couch became more comfortable than normal, the 3 bongs were hitting.

Shane called to ask if I was coming home to cook desert and while I pretended to be stone cold sober, I couldn't quite pull it off. He picked it straight off, actually.

Anyway, I decided not so long after that I should head home and make an appearance and quite possibly whip up that chocolate cake and surprise everyone.

My phone had been in my jacket and I hadn’t heard it ring. So, I wasn’t answering it, naturally. I didn’t check it until I’d got home, when I casually pulled it from my jacket pocket as I headed into the house. Sam had called 4 times and sent 3 messages... something about telling him I was okay. But, I hadn’t organised to see him, I hadn’t not turned up when I should have. I was a bit surprised, actually. So, I tried to make light of it and responded with the fact I’d been smoking pot and I was considering making a chocolate cake for our normal Sunday night dinner. Sam responded with he was dumping me. Oh yes, quite cross

I went to answer his text, but stopped and decided to think about it. What was the correct response? What would I say to him? I guessed, if that’s how I made him feel, maybe he was right, maybe I should be dumped.

I came home to the tail end of Sebastian’s dinner.

Mark L and I went and got more pot and the Kenwood from the M. Street kitchen to make the chocolate cake. I was very stoned by this stage and couldn’t help playing with the moles on Mark L’s back as he was bent over head first in the cupboard having trouble locating all the bits. Every time I tweeked them he'd bang his head on the cupboard, making cross comments about me stopping it. It was funny. Oh, I was just stupid really, I don’t know why... because they were there and I was feeling silly. I soon pushed him out of the way when he was being a "boy" about the utensil cupboard and found the missing bits which he couldn't.

I was thinking about Sam and his message the whole time.

Suffice to say we smoked the rest of the pot and the chocolate cake didn't get made.