Summer Slowly Seeps Away

It's cold. My feet are cold. The summer is slowly draining out of the year, I can feel it in my toes, sitting here sockless in my dressing gown. My coffee warms me, my muesli milk cools me. I have to get ready to go to work. Tick, tick, tick  the time is slipping away.

8.02, sadly I really have to hustle along. How I'd like to sit here for the rest of the day. It is always amazing how time seems so much more delicious when it is meant for another purpose. I've got almost fifteen minutes before I have to go. Eleven, to be exact, in an inexact measure  And I am still not dressed. I still haven't finished my coffee. Bugger.

Groan. Gotta go. Work, work, everybody has got to work. Otherwise, how do the billionaires make another billion, if the little people don't do their little jobs? I ask you? And as One Term Tony Abbott Captains the SS Australia deftly back to the 1950s we'll all be working longer, so it would seem, and for less pay if One Term Tony has his way, to make the rich richer, to make all of the Liberal Party's financial supporters a bucket load of extra cash.

Sleeping Buddy

Buddy has slept with me for the last two nights. Well, he was alone, I was alone. I can't sleep unless there is somebody snoring next to me. Ha, ha. The two of them sound alike when they snore in sleep. They do, just the same.

Although, a snoring partner doesn't keep me awake. I can fall asleep listening to Sam snoring, I really don't know what all the fuss is about.

Buddy was awake when I woke up. His big, brown eyes gazing over at me. They both have big, brown eyes. They look at me adoring, in almost the same way. It's lovely. (Sam doesn't quite drool the same, though)

They are both nicer than me, sweeter with sunnier dispositions, but I'm the funny one.

I guess Buddy should sleep in his kennel tonight, tomorrow is a work day. Still, it is nice to wake up with him. He is such a teddy bear. Smile.

Contented Buddy

As the Guitar Gently Strums in the Background...

I lit my first fire for the year. That first burn, it goes off like a rocket from all the debris that has been thrown into the hearth over summer.

The back French Doors are open and the cool breeze is blowing in swirling the hot air from the fire around the room, like the heat is being gently folded through the breeze. I’m smoking pot and writing my journals.

I’m having my very own Better Midler Festival, playing all her albums from start to finish, every one of them, first track to the last.

I'm good at being on my own. I've always been happy in my own company. I always have something to do, that I never feel like I get time otherwise to do.

Just as well, Buddy has deserted me for the comfort of the pillows of my bed. I’ve retrieved him twice, with the words, I need one of my guys around me, but he doesn’t stay. Lazy couch potato bulldog.

I ate hot cross buns and two ice creams, I bought a box.


I'm having a Bette Midler festival, playing her albums from the first to the last, right the way through

And I have just made a Patti La Belle mixed tape on iTunes, it took me all afternoon. All the songs I don’t have on any of her albums, and the remixes as well.

Could I get any gayer?

Two Weeks

Sam left for Indonesia for two weeks to visit his family. I drove him to the airport fairly late, for a midnight flight. It was a rush in the end, when he checked his ticket to find he was leaving at 12am and not 1am, as he first thought.

Malaysian Airlines, through KL. Don't think I have been a little worried about it.

We kissed each other and told one another that we loved each other, right in front of the security guard, at the 5 min drop off. I'm guessing we did nothing that the security guard hasn't seen before. It is a modern world, after all.

I played, Amy Winehouse, Valarie, as I headed back down the freeway towards home.

Two weeks. I'll miss him. Perhaps, it is good that I am working for the next two weeks? Maybe? Sometimes coming home to an empty house, is worse than being in an empty house all day.

Sorry

Sorry. So many people now a days say sorry. Automatically, for any infraction, or perceived infraction.  You know, when you walk through a door, when they step out onto the footpath next to you, when you walk past each other in the street, picking up caramels from the bench next to me in the Milk Bar, they just naturally say sorry. "Oh sorry."

Of course, there is nothing wrong with saying sorry, many a Prime Minister has been reluctant to say it.

But what is it a sign a sign of? I don't know. That we are living in fear. When do you say sorry? When you are avoiding a confrontation. Why would you do that, because you are afraid... or some essence of that. It seems to becoming the default position of human beings now a days. Oh sorry.

I so often have the response in my head to someone who says sorry to me. "What are you sorry for?" Just for their very existence, it would seem. Ha, ha, I exaggerate. 

But have you noticed?

Somethings it seems to be the most bizarre thing. We just walked past each other, that's all we did.

Not that it really means anything, I guess. I just remember a time when people would have said hello, or how are you going, instead. Or did I dream my childhood?

Old images

I love restoring old photos, it is my very favourite thing to do. This photo was fucked. It was scanned from an old slide and the image was covered in dirt. Two days on photoshop and it has come up quite nicely.

It is a shame I can't make a profession of it, restoring old images.

It is a cute picture of the baby, who I think is my brother Will. I'm not sure as that isn't my mother. She was much more beautiful than that, with black hair and blue eyes.

It's funny, us three kids all have different coloured eye. My brother's are blue like my mother's, my sisters are brown and mine are green.

Work from Home

I’d love to work as a job as an image repairer. Work from home and all that. Of course, it would most likely result in RSI, it gets that way now, sometimes. After cleaning images all day, I end up with an aching hand and arm.

I was reading an article about not working as a wage slave. It said we should all start a business and a website is a good way to earn money 24/7 rather than 8 hours a day. 

I messaged Sam and said we should open a website design business, that he should teach me - being a computer programmer, web designer, himself - how to do it and with his guidance I could run it, until it makes money and then he could quit work and join me at home on our laptops side by side in our home office. 

Surely, it must be a growth industry. I would guess that more and more people will want web sites.

Sam's response was that I should study a programming and web design first, as there was so much information to learn. That I could do it on line there were a lot on offer. He could give me pointers on what courses I should do.

Oh? I thought. I guess that means he's not so keen? It sounded like a good idea, too. "I'm smart," I told him, to which he gave me one of "those" looks.

"I know you are smart, honey, but you know nothing about computer programming."

Something Horrific

I left at midday, to have lunch with my old boss, Beck, in the city. It felt unseasonably warm, overcast, humid; an oddly hot and cold sort of day, as though we were in for a change, of some sort. I took  off my jeans and put on my shorts before I left. I'm a bit of a sweater and I didn't want to be all sweaty when I got there, after walking from Fitzroy to King Street.

As I walked down Collins Street, a man came the other way with tattooed shins and calves, as though he had black knee length socks tattooed on his legs. It looked so odd, probably the weirdest tattoo I'd seen. I couldn't help but stare, but then I guess somebody with that kind of tattoo wants people to look.

Two sixty-something year old women walked out of Collins Place and were heading straight towards me, right in front of me. They were kind of leaning into each other as they walked and talked, as if they were complicit in something. The one on the right, with menopausal henna hair and a nylon bag with a cane handle, looking straight at me, said, “What happened in front of me last week was,” she looked at her friend. “Horrific.”

Then they passed me, gone passed my left ear. Swish. Out of sight.

No! I spun around. You can’t do that, I wanted to call out. What happened? What was horrific? What? Tell me!

But they were gone.


I considered following them, but wondered if they’d have me arrested. You know, if horrific things had already happened... in front of her.