Pissing Around the House

I glanced over at the clock and it was 11.11. It always makes me smile, feel contented, connected with the world, in tune. Not really sure why, I guess like all other human beings, it is because it is about me. When it is about me, we all luv it. That is when we luv it, hey?

Of course, my bedside clock is set 10 minutes fast so it wasn’t really 11.11 at all, but it did spark something in my brain and I did hop out of bed.

Down in the kitchen, while I was making coffee, I picked up my phone to text David to see how he is feeling today – he had one of his oestrogen filled 28 day cycle girlie blue days yesterday – and my phone said 11.11, I guess, just in case I wasn’t convinced about it earlier.

Too blue to get out of bed.

Crying hysterically over, well… um… very little.

The product of a spoilt childhood, which has set him up for an adult life where the world had better revolve around him or he’ll have emotional turns and take to his bed.

Underneath it all, he is just an emotional little girl.

He didn’t answer immediately.

I turned on my laptop and wrote my journal, which now a days becomes my blog. (Maybe this is why my readership has dropped off dramatically?) It was quite a lovely day, but, you know, all of this sitting on the lounge room floor with my laptop on the coffee table is doing me no good at all. I’m beginning to creak when I get up. I never used to creak when I got up, when did that start? Grrrr! Too much sitting in one spot immobile all day. What is it “they” say 10 thousand steps per day? I’m wondering if I am currently doing 10?

Why can’t I do one hour's exercise in the morning… each morning? You’d think it would be the easiest thing in the world to do? No, really?


So, after I’d finished my muesli and my coffee and the morning news, I decided it was a day to do something, even if it wasn’t exercise. Achieve! Yay! You know, like the rest of the world. Something. Shrug. Get up and walk around.

There have been syringes in the front bush, which hangs through my front fence, for quite some time. Mostly used and all paced away neatly back into their packets. All at kid height, it is fair to say, who’d be a parent now a days? HANDS IN THE AIR! It must be the WORST decade of the WORST century to bring up the devil spawn. WHO’d be a mother, the hardest job in the WORLD! … yeah, right. Sheesh! Pack of fucken wingers! However, the syringes didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so I decided to leave them just where they were. You know, if it isn’t broken and all that.

But, in the last week there has been syringes on the footpath in front of my front gate, so I decided it was time to remove the lot, all problem syringes. Not that it made any sense, as the syringes lying on the ground in front of my gate were out and uncapped and ready to spike some stupid child whose mother wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on her devil sprog, where the syringes from the bush were capped and put back in their packets, like a good little drug addict who thinks safety first.

And some filthy little bitch dog has crapped on my front veranda. I noticed it yesterday when I was coming in the front gate from the supermarket. What is that on the wall next to the front door? I thought. A patch of something? Euw! As I got closer, I saw that there were three small brown turds below the semi circular patch on the wall. “Oh really?” Some dog had taken a crap and then lifted its leg and pissed.

So, I headed out with pink rubber gloves, tongs, a couple of prodding sticks and a pan and broom, as well as the larger broom for sweeping. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. Time to get into it.

Once the syringes were safely in the neighbour's bin – oh relax, it is the annoying business from Gertrude Street that leaves its bin on the footpath all week – I pulled out the weeds around the tree on the footpath. They were growing thick like grass, a mat of them, suddenly they were there. The last time I looked it was just mulch. And I was on a roll, you know, once you start doing stuff, you just want to move on and do more stuff. Once you see the cleanliness spreading around you, you just want to spread it around you some more like jam on toast.

I was on my hands and knees, (assuming the position) crawling forward, ripping at the earth with my fingers, like a giant, actually, tiny, physical hoe.

“You’re working hard,” said a voice behind me. “I could watch you all day.”

It was Jackson Wag, my next door neighbour. He was up for a chat, I could tell, he simply stood next to me waiting for me to answer. I stood up and took a deep breath.

“Someone has to do it.” I wiped a pink rubber hand across my brow

We stood out the front like a couple of old woman over the back fences and chatted about the neighbourhood.

“Lovely day, ay.”

“Yeah, lovely day.”

Jackson had new teeth. They looked nice to, great actually, very natural. I’d already noticed them, but he mentioned them when he was talking about getting acting jobs.

He’s won an award lately for short film making, in which he acted, so it has inspired him to seek out some more acting work. Hence the new teeth.

He said that there had been people shooting up in the laneway, as he had found discarded syringes outside his place.

He asked me how I was going.

“I’m not working much and I don’t seem to care. Sometimes I tell myself I should be worried, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect on me.”

“Oh, what’s the worst that can happen? You sell you house, you take your equity and you travel for the rest of your life? You know, this could be a great thing, not a worry at all.”

He headed off to get lunch.


Travel for the rest of my life? Could you imagine? I don’t know how much Jackson Wag thinks my house is worth, such is the pity.

I decided that I had done quite enough and come back into my laptop and a fresh coffee. Lunch?

Activity over. Achievement done.


I’m still pushing ahead with my photo restoration, as I want to give a restored copy of my family photos to my brother and sister.

I rescanned that central Australia photo of us kids on the back of our blue hired Datsun, which has always been backwards, which I have always said I needed to rescan. That led onto rescanning photos for the rest of the afternoon.

Beck

The phone rang today. I reached for it just as the voice on the answering machine said, "it is V from (name of employment agent), I have a payroll position you may be interested in...." 

I gave out a little yelp! I recoiled, pulled my hand away really fast. I didn't pick it up.

Bad Christian!

I recoiled from the phone call from the employment agent. I should have grabbed the phone, it should have been what I was waiting for? But, suddenly, on hearing the employment agent’s overly cheerful voice, my actual “want” to work came sharply into focus. Suddenly, apparently, I didn’t want to work at all. Fuck it! I’ll take my chances, for now. I should be concerned, as I told Jackson Wag, but, apparently, I'm not.

I text David late in the afternoon to see if he is okay. He hadn’t answered my earlier text. He said he had only just got out of bed to head to the salt mines. I told him I ate asparagus. He said he wanted to smell my piss. I knew that would cheer him up.

Shane came home with fish and chips. He turned on the bad light in the kitchen, yet again. Then turned on the lights in the lounge. I had been happy with the open fire and TV and just as he got comfortable Tulli called on Shane’s phone and Shane headed to his bedroom.

Saved by the bell… er… bells… I thought. Or is that saved by the Sydney ho? Did I tell you he moonlights as a prossy? God I am a bitch!

Shane didn’t come back, which we love, except to make tea and generally interrupt, by putting on the kitchen light that glares into the lounge room. Despite years of being told not to use that light and despite years of using the down lights, which don’t glare into the kitchen, Shane is now flicking the switch on for the annoying lights. I don’t think it is deliberate, I might respect him more if it was. Obviously. No, I just think it is stupidity, no really, I do. The umpteenth time he has flicked on the annoying light, I began to scheme replacing the globe in that particular light for a broken globe. Where do I get a broken globe from? I guess I just buy the cheapest globe from the shop and tap in on something a few times until the filament breaks.

He said something about going to bed and that he was going to Sydney tomorrow.

“Have you left you rent?”

“Oh… I don’t, actually, get paid until tomorrow,” he said. ”I guess I could drop in in at lunch time.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It’s just that I think I’m going to have quite a day tomorrow and I may not get time.“ Of course you are darling, it is always a “big day” in Shane’s world.

Clearly, he’d decided that, as soon as he’d said it, or as soon as I agreed to it, dropping in at lunchtime wasn’t such a good idea. “Maybe I could do it before work.”

“Okay,” I said.

So, what am I to conclude? He had no intention of giving me my rent tomorrow?


My fireplace is still smoking, it still needs cleaning. You know some midget stuffed down from the top… flapping his arms. No, seriously, it needs a clean out. They say that a chimney fire is dangerous and potentially dangerous, however, I’ve always found it the best way to clean it out.

The chimney burned, after I put a dried branch completely covered in dead leaves into the fireplace. It roared like a steam train… funny expression really, as I have never, actually, heard a stream train. That isn’t strictly true, one of my parent’s friends had a massive estate up in Healesville, along the side of which ran a train line alone which ran a steam train. My sister and I used to go and stand on the bridge over the train line and watch the steam train roar passed underneath. Sparks and chunks of burning soot flew out of my chimney and into the drizzling night. I was pleased, cheaper than a chimney sweep.

Alley McBeal comes on after 1am. David Letterman comes on after 2am. Once Dave has finished it is always an indication to go to bed. I sat up in bed and watched a repeat of Top Gear, which I watched earlier in the evening.

I turned off the light at 4am. Such freedom, such independence, such happiness.

LIVING THE DREAM!

Translation, living in a dream.