Bad Habits

I left at normal time. I stopped for the last cigarette at the normal place in North Street. I thought those days were behind me, shiver. Still, all the smokers are coming to stay because of the funeral.

I got to work on time. Yadder, yadder, yadder. My (working) life is safe and on time. Keeping busy, with so few demands on my time. You think that would be good, be it isn’t really.

I went to sneak out at lunchtime, 12.30, to have a cigarette before I ate and down came the fucking rain. (Even though I have fessed up at work, I still do it behind their backs.) "@#$%^&*;! Oh, of course!" I don’t think it has rained all morning and it choses this moment to piss down. Bloody hell!

I had my computer in my hand. I slung it over the right hand side of my face, as if a vampire caught out in the morning sun shine. Or a witch in the rain.

 

I had a mornings worth of work, that I stretched out for the whole day. Yay. So easy. Put my feet up. I wished.

Sam was just making the short walk home from the corner of Gertrude Street to our front gate, when I turned the corner into our street tonight. He smiled and waved.

I went in the back door. He went in the front door. I stopped and patted Buddy at the roller door half expecting Sam to walk up the laneway, but he didn’t. As soon as Buddy heard Sam opening the back door, his ears went up and he leapt out of my grip and sprinted to the house. I was left crouching in the driveway, the roller door up and my car door open, on my own.

Who’s dog?

Sam decided that we should head straight out into the sunshine, to buy food. Translation – no joints.

“We need to get ready and leave, now! Move, move, move!”

“Oh, come come,” I said. “If you are going to take this ridiculous attitude, I’d better roll one right now, even before I change out of my work clothes. (I always get changed first)

“You still haven’t learnt that if you follow my instructions you will get on better in life.”

I looked at him with the mull bowl in one hand and the mulli in the other. I laughed. “No.”

Sam adopted his “just poisoned” attitude and called for tea. I’ll follow your instructions to anywhere, baby.
Sam decided that it was seafood risotto, unless I could come up with a better idea for dinner. I’m short on ideas for food, it is too hard. Thank goodness for Sam.

“I see, you just don’t want to stand there and stir.”

“That’s not true.” It was true.

“So what it your better idea?” I didn’t have one. Looked as though we were having risotto.

So we drank a cup of tea, dunked what was left of our Scotch Finger biscuits. Then we smoked another j, with a sustain objection from he who wants to be obeyed. Once he’d got over his second bout of head spins, we saddled up the dog and headed to Woollies.

We walked down the street to the supermarket. Sam headed inside to do the shopping. Buddy sat down and wouldn’t take another step, all the time gazing in the direction in which Sam had gone.

A cute man in a truck babysitting what looked like his daughter said, 

“Look at the doggie,” or some such thing. He smiled at me.

I’ll look at your doggie, I thought.

“Nice dog, mate.”

I smiled back. Cute.

Buddy still wouldn’t budge a muscle. No, nothing. And to all you people who think I was being a wimp, you have never owned a bulldog. They lie down and look sideways at you, as if to say, you’ll never move me. He would not put one paw forward. Not one. Not interested. The sun may have been shining weakly, but I was getting cold. I text Sam to hurry up in there. I accidentally typed “bored” instead of “cold.” Oops.

I dragged Buddy across the road to the sun. Sometimes it works if you cross the road, and on this occasion it did. As soon as he was on the other side. No, that’s as far as I am going, no further forward. The bulldog sat down.

“Goodness me, you can’t wait while I am doing the shopping…” said Sam when he reappeared.

“I meant to type cold not bored.”

“I see,” he replied. “Let’s go.

I stirred the risotto for, what seemed like, hours.