She Must Be 100 years Old

6.30am. I woke to the sounds of Buddy barfing up a chicken bone on the floorboards, lovely. Beige slime and small white bones. Then I lay in bed watching him eat it again, like a car crash I couldn’t look away. Good morning world, I thought. Then I thought, at least I don’t have to mop it up. Then, of course, Bear wouldn’t come downstairs with me for a wee, as she was nervous having to walk passed Buddy while he was eating, he was licking the floorboards by this stage. Buddy is laid back and gentle, but he is food aggressive with other dogs. I’m trying to whisper her name, so as not to wake Sam, but to no avail. I catch my whisper getting more and more angry, which makes me laugh, ridiculous, so I decide to give up on trying to take her outside.


The pond fountain seemed to be even noisier this morning, so I switched it off. There. Done. Quiet. We have to get that timer, so the fountain doesn’t run all night, and it isn’t disturbing the peace of the morning. Although at the moment the filter has a lot of work to do, mopping up our years of neglect. Maybe buying the timer is a job for today?

It was a lovely, cool, gentle morning.

I lit a cigarette and immediately wondered when I was going to quit. It makes me feel like shit to boot, so go figure.

7.30am. I heard Sam in the shower, so I went to our room to get Bear for a wee. Buddy was standing in the middle of our bed. I wondered if he’d finished throwing up. Oh, that wouldn’t be nice, to say the least, dog sick in the doona, imagine if we didn’t discover it until we were getting into bed tonight. I winced at the idea. I called Bear, but Buddy came down instead. Roll of the eyes, dogs. Bear followed though and headed outside for a wee. Then Buddy went to the back door and once outside threw up again. I wondered if I needed to go and check our bed again?

We took Buddy and Bear to the dog park, it is a lovely way to start the day. The sunshine was gorgeous like warmed honey. Not too many people in the dog park this morning. Just us essentially. I wondered if it was like the beginning of the week at the gym. Monday is always guilt day, guilty from not attending over the weekend, so there are lots of people. Then it starts to drop off. Today it had dropped off to just to us. The old Asian lady was there, of course, with her decrepit Chihuahuas. One of her dogs has white eyes, which kind of creeps me out, as it looks like the devil. It barks aggressively if it senses any dog coming near it. Her other dog is a nasty piece of work, running at any dog that comes near it with its fangs out. She always looks like she’d blow over in a strong wind, as she teeters along with the two leads in each hand. She must be 100. Still she is always there walking her dogs. She seems quite lovely, oblivious to her bad tempered dogs, chatting away to us, saying hello, or whatever, except it is all in her native language, so I don’t understand a word she says. She has pleading eyes, as if she is willing me to understand her. It makes me feel sad, if it makes me feel anything at all.

9.30am. I’m sitting outside smoking in the sunshine. I love this time of day, as the whole day is in front of me. I’m cross with myself for still not having quit my holiday smoking. It infuriates Sam.

Then it was time to feed the kids. Oh, I would never use that expression in real life, but it amuses me to use it here. I don’t know why, as I would never say it. Buddy sits patiently. Bear keeps her eyes on me with more nervous energy. She is such a food scrounger, annoyingly so really, but in all other aspects she is a nice dog.

10am. What to do today? It is time I caught up my blog, so I must get busy writing. Time to catch up to present day, time to revise my blog entries rewriting many of them. My writing style is very much a rewriting style. All of my writing is very much improved with a rewrite.

We ate Japanese for lunch. I had a bento Box with stewed chicken, Sam had his usual fried chicken.

I tried to write in the afternoon. Oh, winding up the cogs in my head, and finding a comfortable place to write, is always difficult. Not getting endlessly distracted is even harder.

Sam bought home another one of his colleague’s plants to be repotted. I think this is the third plant he has bought home. I seem to be the go to guy when it comes to maintaining the plants in his office. I don’t mind, in fact, I kind of like it. It is sad to see a neglected plant, and it is easy for me to make them happy again.

We cleaned the pond some more. I got in there with my hands and dragged the debris out. Later, I saw a piece on the news about a flesh eating bacteria and how a guy had lost an arm and a lot of his torso in fighting it, and I remembered the cut on my finger after which I was in the kitchen pilling on the Betadine to my cut finger.

I made calamari and lemon risotto for dinner.

We watched Strange Things on Netflix. Sam kept telling me it was stupid. I kept telling him he needed to suspend his disbelief. I told him it was, after all, about friendship and truth. He remained unconvinced. He likes action movies/series.