I woke early… maybe, my conscience is not so clear any longer? It’s not. I sat up in bed and read stuff on my computer. Puffed pillows. Goose feather doona. Comfy as you like. Cosy. Lush.
I had to take mum to the dentist at midday. I calculated and recalculated my timeframe for the morning, otherwise I leave one step out, usually the “getting ready” and the “leaving” kind of merge as the one time. Dentist at midday. I have to be at the home at 11.30. I have to leave here at 11am. I have to start getting ready, at the latest, by 10.30am. Then the count down began, as I lay in bed with my computer. I have 3 hours… 2 hours… 1 hour… 20 minutes.
I am so worried about mum’s incontinence that it is making me dread taking her anywhere, let alone the dentist. Can you imagine? Oh… Jesus!
Then I had a brain wave. Maybe, some people might say that my brain finally kicked in, finally realised what, actual, help I have available to me. Whatever? I rang the home and told them I would be picking her up at 11.30 and could they take her to the toilet just before that.
“Yes, no problem.”
I sat on the front step with Missy and ate muesli and drank coffee, the morning sun was warm and gorgeous, the morning air clean and fresh. Missy rubbed against my leg and purred.
I looked up and noticed Shane’s car across the road still parked. I called out to him about going to work, fearing he’d fallen asleep again, he’s capable of it, he said he wasn’t going to work. He had four days off last week from Australia Day to last Sunday. He had taken drugs for the first few days. He said later that he’d been all things to all people and consequently he hadn’t got nearly enough sleep and that he was just tired today and couldn’t face it.
Yes… well… of course that would be it. I wondered if he, actually, believed it?
When I got to the home, mum was already and waiting by the door. On the way to the dentist, she said that she was very pleased that she had teeth problems because it meant that I visited her and that I took her out on an outing.
I felt the sting of my neglect pierce my solar plexus’.
She had her two bottom teeth removed, the one which had broken off due to decay and the one that had detached from her jaw bone, which was wobbling around alarmingly in her gum. We made an appointment for next week to have numerous teeth cavities filled.
“Please don’t take me straight back. Please can we take the long way around?”
I bought some lunch at a deli in Hartwell, Camberwell Road and we headed to Wattle Park. The deli boys were very cute, all four graduating in age; dark hair, good looks, very nice. I imagined them as brothers… dirty smile. Don’t mess with my fantasy. Mum couldn’t eat so soon after the extraction, so she couldn’t have any food. But, she said she didn’t mind, of course.
We sat in the sun at the picnic tables surrounded by gum trees and bush land as far as we could see and shared the blood orange juice, as I ate my roll. It was a lovely, sunny day, not too hot, with a bit of a breeze.
We watched the workmen dismantling the second tram in the distance, the one that had been vandalised and set alight just recently. It seemed such a shame. I still remember those trams from my childhood, so they have been in the park for years, more years than I care to think about. I wondered if it would be replaced? I kind of thought not, as it is not exactly a 21st century kind of amusement... now is it. It really is a relic from children’s playgrounds of an era now past. I thought it was a shame.
We went for a walk on the gravel path under the trees.
The park was lovely, really. It was a perfect day. There seemed to be several young children with, what looked like, their nannies looking after them. Nice for a select few, I guess.
I got mum home by 3pm for afternoon tea. I kind of thought that was a good idea, as she missed lunch.
I wondered if I should have gone in and sat with her for a while, but I wanted to get home before the dreaded “mum run” at the various schools between there and home. The mother’s taxis’ clearly believe they have a god given right to drive, as they like and to park just anywhere because, I am assuming, they are mums. You know, good for them, but I just don’t have to be a part of it.
When I got home, I played on my computer for a while. Shane made a brief appearance, but then seemed to head straight back to bed.
I can’t stop thinking about my work situation. I vacillate between getting a job and renting the spare rooms in the house. I don’t want to work; I don’t want to live with more people. I want to write, I should make this big house pay an income, pay its way. I’m continually trying to work out the figures on it all. Adding and re-adding, trying to make two, not quite preferable, scenarios work. It’s doing my head in.
At 5pm, I went for a walk for an hour. It was a lovely warm afternoon. I took my camera naturally... still with my current theme of taking shots of people without them knowing. Does that sound creepy? It’s not meant to be creepy. No, not in a creepy way. No, not creepy. Just in a natural, unposed way. Pictures of life, rather than picture of individuals.
Just as I was approaching home, my phone rang and it was Dean. Dean loves a chat. He had been talking to Jimmy about the forthcoming birthday weekend, camping in the country, on the side of a hill in Castlemaine. I like the sound of it. I like camping, every now and again. All that nature can be intoxicating. Dean wanted to know if I was going? He may be going with Katarina, his ex-girlfriend, if she can get a house sitter, (I’m not sure why she needs a house sitter?) or on his own if she can’t. Either way he is going to hire a car, as he only has his work truck now, and he would pick Sam and I up and drive us there, if Katarina wasn’t going, if we wanted. I'm not really sure, the jury is still out. If she was, the two of them would go together. We chatted for ages, as Dean and I do when we are on the phone. Dean likes to talk.
Shane was still in bed at this stage… so his presence at home wasn’t really disturbing me. Yay!
Sam cooked me dinner. Cute, huh? So, I was able to disappear to my room soon after I had eaten.
Anthony called to tell me about the near car accident that he had in the shopping centre car park, when some idiot sped through at 100 kilometres an hour and Anthony had to pull up in a hurry, feeling the slip stream from the hoon's car gust through his open car window, it was so close. Wooosshhhh. Ah! He had to come home and put his sling back on as his, newly healed, shoulder as it ached from the jarring of his car screeching to a halt. Fucker!
Anthony asked me, just in passing, you know casually, if Sam was at my place tonight. "Is Sam with you?"
"No... not tonight."
"Oh..." Curious tone. "Where is he then?"
"He's at his place."
"Oh?" Can a tone be more curious... in a nonchalant, non intrusive way?
"I'll see him on Friday night."
"Friday night?"
"Yes, he comes over Friday night and heads off to work from here on Monday morning."
"Oh... well... I see."
Well, that conversation got me to thinking... something that I have thought before, however. I’m a free agent, I have a car, I don’t have to get up and go, well, anywhere in the mornings, why don’t I see more of Sam during the week. He is often home by himself, after all. I don't have to be sooooooo routine driven, surely. Spontaneity is something that alludes me, clearly.
So, when he messaged me a short time after, coincidentally, I spoke to Anthony and said he was cooking noodles and did I want some, I said yes. (Life is full of coincidences, despite David saying there is no such thing)
It was 7.15. “I’ll just need a shower," I still hadn't showered since my walk, "so I probably won't be there until 8pm.”
“Ok.”
“I’m cooking now.”
“Move!!”
He was cleaning his fish tank when I got there. I couldn’t help but comment that he religiously cleans his fish tank to a demanding schedule of fish tank cleaning, but, he has a very high rate of fish attrition. Maybe, he should lighten up and set the fish tank cleaning to “loose” and see how the fish survive? He’s the “gotta have a plan” one in the relationship and I’m the “let it loose” one.
"Maybe I am just a crap fish carer."
"It is a fish death camp." But then, what fish tank isn't.
The noodles were lovely, as per usual. I do so love it when he cooks for me, because he cooks me lovely, lovely food, more so than the fact that I am a lazy arse and don't cook. But, I do cook for him. Hmmm, he might not exactly agree with that statement. I cook for him too, when he puts pressure on to cook. I’m not a, shall we say, naturally enthusiastic cook.
Sam wanted to come to my place after dinner. Oh, I felt bad, when I said no. How could I leave my gorgeous little dumpling (do you like that) when he wanted to come with me? But, it was a school night and he goes to bed really early, 10pm and if he is with me, I have to go to bed at that time, too. And I wanted to head home and write my journal, this here, this rot, I was a day behind, still am, so I said no.
“But honey, it will be switch it off! And go to sleep at 10pm.” (That's what he says to me when he comes to bed and I have the TV on)
“I see,” he said. He didn’t seem too disappointed; I hope he wasn’t.
I felt mean driving home and vacillated between wishing I’d said yes and feeling mean and thinking that it was okay to want to stay up late and write my journal. I am allowed. I don't work. If he has to go to sleep at 10pm... but, his handsome face asleep on the pillow next to me... be still my beating heart.
Shane was watching Notting Hill when I got home. I made tea and lay on the other couch. It seemed like the perfect brainless piece of fluff to wind down to.
However, Shane seemed to be very chatty and wanting to talk, a consequence of him being home on his own all day. He doesn’t like being on his own, remember. I didn’t feel like chatting, part of me was still with Sam back at his place and I just wanted to be still and feel the decision that I had made about coming home on my own, to make it feel like the right decision.
Shane said he’d had the best weekend, but he’d tried being all things to all people and consequently he hadn’t got nearly enough sleep and that he was just tired today and just couldn’t face it, work, today. There was Bruno’s on Sunday night. Sebastian had been at Bruno’s all afternoon cooking. (Of course, there is no show without fucken Sebastian) And where Bruno used to get to the point of eventually boring Shane, in the past, he’d recently renovated his house and he had also travelled extensively over the last year or so and he had now finally grown up and was more interesting to be around. And D is sooooo in love with Ashley and Ashley is soooo in love with D that it is lovely to see...
...yep, yep, yep...
Will this “back to me” self focus yap ever end, I thought? I just want to lie still and chill and not think about too much. The trouble being that I had been talking with people all day and Shane had been home on his own.
So, despite being really comfortable on the couch, I went to bed fairly soon after... just too much chat. Really. Or, as Sam says, nyp nyp nyp nyp. Am I a terrible person? I ask you? Awful? Really? My tea was still hot and still more than half full… that’s how far I made it. Nervous. Smile. Shrug.
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