Monday, September 09, 2013

Crystal Clear Windows To Our Souls

I woke at 8.45, wondering again why I have to wake up so early on a Sunday.

It's Tony Time... with his deputy Prime Minister Julie Torrance. Boring bitch. “Here’s Tony!” Oh, I shivered at the thought. How could Australia be so stupid? A conservative, christian climate sceptic? The Liberal Party, without any policies, who were likely to sell Australian’s up the river to please their rich friends. Likely to sell the aspirational voters, who never have any chance of being on the Liberal’s target audience list, up the river. In the end, at the very last minute, the Liberal Party admitted they probably won't get the budget back into balance any sooner than Labor would have. Their budget line isn’t much different to Labor’s. Oh shudder!

Oh, it is best not to think about it. Shudder! Hopefully, that duffus Tony Abbott will open his mouth and slide his foot into it sometime soon. It is the only thing left, some cringe worthy entertainment from Captain Crud to make us laugh. It is sad, the only thing left is the entertainment value.

The morning after… shake the head. The sun was shining, belying the profound tragedy that had happened.


I put on washing, first thing. Easy. Stop thinking, it is far too early for that nonsense. It is something you can do before you have to think. And it pleases Sam, interpretation, it earns me brownie points. He calls me a lazy arse more often than not. I have to be more on my toes, lift my game, I can’t let the side down. I can’t disappoint him. Sam likes to go go go, it is true. I like to sit back more, also true.

Or I say no, stuff you! I am sitting on my arse and doing as I please.

I could be Mr Whiny pants, if I want, but they are the two choices. And all those people who are in a relationship will understand when I say I chose the former.

I put on coffee and cleaned the kitchen. I wanted it to sparkle by the time Sam came down.

I gazed out the back window into the garden with my coffee in my hand. I thought about the world. Sunday, you say.


Is it wrong that I don’t really know if I want the job I am doing, anymore? Six month’s work, possibly leading to a permanent role. Shouldn’t I just accept it, in these uncertain times, and be grateful? Shouldn’t I think of myself as lucky that there is a company that wants me? It only takes me 15 minutes door to door, it is pretty laid back, the work should be relatively easy. (Truthfully, thus far, there isn’t enough)

I have felt this way ever since we all talked about voting last week. Since Cathy and Christine agreed that they would vote for the party that fixes the boat people problem? They’d vote for the party who stops the immigrants from forming their own groups. The party that makes them learn English. The party that makes them assimilate. Oh, I know, that sounds ridiculous, but?

Is this the level we are at, OMG! That was my reaction.

Do I really want to work with dumb arses? Is what followed fairly quickly. With nice people who hold dumb arse views?

I guess, it is not so much working with dumb arses, as such, as… um… no, it is. Don’t they know anything about the history of immigration into Australia? Clearly, they don’t. Are they that stupid? Yes they are. Well, maybe not stupid as insular, living their tiny little lives in their tiny little suburbs, with their tiny little ideas, being scared of what they don’t know.

You know that is being really fucking kind.

Think people. Do some research. Don’t just believe the charlatans and the snake charmers… that would be the politicians. Put some thought into it. Oh god think!

The boat people involves so few people and is such a beat up by politicians. What happened to you compassion for your fellow man?

And maybe it isn’t so much as having to work with dumb arses, as that by its very nature it is excluding me from working with more thinking and enlightened people.

It could be much better than this?

People say these people aren’t racist, but no matter how I look at it, from whatever angle, I don’t know what else to call them.

And… it is not my normal role, which could be good, I thought… but may not. I've never worked in an HR role. The HR department, like all HR departments, has an inability to communicate its message. Oh no, it’s not irony, it is just fact. The HR director is as useless as they come. The others swear he has ADD which is pretty much par for the course for HR directors. Yay.


Sam appeared downstairs and pretty soon took the new cobweb broom, that we bought at Preston market yesterday and cleaned the entire house of cobwebs. Just like that. Done. He was determined to work. I was happy at my computer.

I paid the bills, mums bills mostly. I’d been slack and hadn’t really paid them since I got back from Vietnam. Sister Roz commented on my slackness, when we visited mum last week, she said that we were paying interest when I paid some of the bills late. I don’t think so, I said, but she insisted, with some of them anyway. Maybe it is true. I decided to get on to them, you know, just in case. I can’t have my sister telling me that I am not doing a good job, in that “convinced” tone that she gets.

Sam ironed shirts for work, for him and me. Isn’t he lovely.


It was a lovely day, the sun shining, the sky was blue, nothing indicating that the end of the world as we know it had started with those right wing idiots gaining political power.

The morning was kind of slow, Sam was kind of quiet, pottering about. I am getting the distinct idea that sitting around and doing very little on the weekends, as I like to do and as we have done thus far in our relationship, is no longer what he wants to do. He had chores for us to do. Especially pleased as he was from his recent bout of window cleaning, I should have realised what was coming next.

The glass roofed atrium had to be cleaned. I decided just to go with it, you know as Sam was very keen. Get up there, be generous, I told myself. Smile. Put in, be a do bee. The sun was shining, as I sat on the tin roof and he sat on top of the parapet wall and we cleaned the roof glass. Squeegee, sponges and razorblade scrapers. Of course, I waved a squeegee over the glass, while Sam scrubbed with a sponge. He went over some of the panes that I’d cleaned, giving me a look.

That roof hasn’t been cleaned for years. After however long the dirt doesn’t get any worse, as they say. I say. It just develops into a kind of streaky grey and everyone stops noticing after a while.


Sam cooked fish for lunch. He cooked cabbage and the leftover lamb from last night cut up. It was very nice.

I washed up after that meal. More washing up. Yay. But we had lovely fried fish, a plate full, that we bought at the Preston Market on Saturday. Ah the market, don’t you just love the market? The hustle, the bustle, the pushing and the shoving. The spruikers who have their own individual call, like a race caller, or a rare bird. I love the pungent smells, the boxes of specials, the people, the shopping jeeps, carting it all away.


Sam wanted to clean the inside of the glass of the atrium too. Of course. He was on a roll and not to be told otherwise.

“Can’t we do it later, isn’t the outside enough?” I protested as the huge roll of carpet is still lying on the floor making it difficult to put a ladder up. I sounded like a whiny child, even I could hear that.

“No.”

“We need to do it when the carpet isn’t there.” Although, when that would be I had no idea. Sam instructed me to hold the ladder as he hung off the side of it. He stood with one foot on the ladder and the other on whatever the closest piece of furniture was.

It didn’t, actually, take that long. Afterwards, the glass shone and the light was clearer and the atrium seemed bigger. The roof looked lovely, even I had to agree. The day seemed brighter, nicer, more lovely than I ever remember it being.

We both admired the clean glass for the rest of the afternoon.


Sam cooked pork belly, fish, and cabbage and shrimp. It seemed like a huge amount of food.

“That’s because it is for our lunch tomorrow too,” he replied. “Don’t eat all the pork belly.”

“Oh…?”

“Eat the cabbage.”

“Oh.”

I washed up. I felt like I was washing up all day. I winged and Sam started doing some of them, as I stepped into the kitchen to watch Alicia Keys on Sixty Minutes. Good on him, but I told him to stop. The agreement is that he cooks and he does cook without the whinny pants complaining that he hears from me about the washing up. Besides, I was just being a grump, and I’m sure he gets sick of me doing that, even if he doesn’t say anything.

We watched Power Games. Murdoch vs Packer. It was interesting to remember that back dynasties go back a number of generations. It was set in the first half of the 1960’s so the cars were really cool. Volvo 122. Holden FC. Rover P5. Mercedes limousine.

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