Back At It

Ah, lovely, mid morning, one pot of coffee down, life is good. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. (the ambulance siren wails some where far off in the distance) My dog at my feet. How life should be.

I haven't thought about work once. I haven't felt like I should be doing "something else" not at all. I slipped right back into it, up just after 8am (that will improve, once I am fully back into delusional retirement mode) Coffee on. Laptop on. Muesli. Orange juice, freshly squeezed. Freshly squeezed out of a bottle, not like my mother did every morning for us kids, hand squeezed from a bag of large string bag of oranges for 20 years.

Suddenly, Buddy is chewing on my foot, then ankle when I protest, leg. Ouch! Stop it! No! My protests fall on deaf ears, as he decides 'no, this is a fun game." A louder, leader of the pack rebuke is what is required. "NO, I am deadly serious." A bulldog face appears in my lap, looking up for approval.

Oh lovely, life is back to normal. My one thing to do today is make a list of all the things I have to do. I don't know how we all worked full time, you can never get anything done. I have a huge number of things I have to get done. So it is a list, and then nothing else to do all day.

Sam asked me if I was going to ring Jack today, to see if I can get a new work assignment before Xmas. I said,

"No, probably Tuesday. I'm having at least one day off."

I didn't, actually, specify what Tuesday. I thought realistically it would be closer to today fortnight, before I think about that. I still haven’t quite decided what I am going to do if he calls? I think I will ignore his calls for a week. Hopefully he won’t call. Hopefully there is no work.


My pact with Jack about work – my private pact, the pact that Jack doesn’t, actually, know anything about – is that I will accept all the work he gives me. Don’t turn anything down. The down time just naturally occurs in the timing of assignments, in the nature of my work. However, after my second last assignment, which was to be in the outer suburbs, which I only just got out of because my last assignment, which started just before it, got extended, I now have one condition, I’m saying no to any that are too far away. I’m not going to zone three, fuck it, I’d rather be on the dole, if it came to that. Not that I have ever been on the dole, but I’m sure you get what I mean.