Time for Lunch

We were up some time after 9am. I was up first, as Sam has been taking serapax to sleep since our meth session. The poor boy can’t sleep, don’t know why? It doesn’t make too much sense this much later.

We ate porridge. Sam cooked it. He’s getting good at making muesli alternatives. Of course, we still fight over how many sultanas should be included. He puts in just a couple. I get the bag and start to throw in many more. He tries to stop me. We wrestle in front of the stove.

“No!” He puts his arms across me to stop me getting to close to the cook top.

“Yes!” I end up throwing them at the pot.

We headed into La Trobe Street to the dumpling shop to have lunch with Charlie, soft talking Charlie who I have trouble hearing. I always hope there isn’t too much back ground noise, otherwise I often see his lips moving but not much else. Lovely Charlie who turned out to be a mutual friend of ours. There was a crowd waiting for tables when there when we got there at 1pm. When did that start happening? When did we start waiting for tables? I think. It was over the top hot as it always is.

When we were talking about Sam’s job, I was surprised when Charlie said of his work, “It is just a job.” I always thought he was such a career boy.

We drank coffee in Exhibition Street, at the Global Kitchen Cafe. Just coffee, no cakes. Fat boys don’t eat cakes. Ha ha, he he… and if you believe that, I have some lovely sea side property in the Antarctic you may like. But, we still didn’t eat cake.

We cooked roast vegetables and chicken wings for dinner. Sam marinated the chicken wings over night, in a curry sauce. 

David visited in the evening. He was on his way to Club 80, as he so often is when he drops in. He multitasks his visits, he does. We’re the primary reason, but while he is over this way there is a secondary reason? A port in a storm, so to speak, as he circles the heady world of musky men with sweaty intensions. 

He wanted to know about our crystal session earlier in the week, forever living a vicarious drug life is that one. He oo’d and ah’d over every detail, with that wide-eyed look of tell me more, tell me more.

“Okay, I’m off to suck cock,” he says.

We watched the Shawshank redemption in bed. Sam had never seen it before. It is a clever movie, and I liked it all over again.

The Usual Up Tight HR Clone

I went for the job interview, it is in St Kilda Road. Already, that puts it in the “sus” basket, as they say. They are all a bit weird in St Kilda Road. The cbd’s poorer cousin, with chips on all of their shoulders.

I’m nervous before I go because I feel that Jack (my boss guy) has overplayed my weaknesses as strengths, to fill in his gap of a candidate for this particular role. I really feel that he has told the employer what amounts to lies because he wants to fill the assignment and get his commission no doubt.

This makes me super nervous before I leave. I start to pace. I can’t settle. I’m ready far too early and want to leave, but realise that would be stupid. So I am edgy. It makes me feel as though I have failed before I even get there. Stupid, really. Stupid me. Sure it is true that I am rusty with some of this stuff, but I can do it all, have done it all. I’m sure everybody else just says yes and then they wing it. I should learn to fake it more often and worry about the consequences after. But, I can’t be like that. I know I have to know that I am on top of my game.

Too careful. Too safe.

I’m sure Steve Jobs and Richard Branson and the like did the exact opposite.

It is raining and miserable travelling down there. It is raining on my head, pitter pat. I’m covered in a fine sprinkling of rain.

The receptionist speaks with an English accent. Laurel, the HR chick who interviewed me, was very corporate and spoke with an Irish. I’m feel like I have strayed into some sort of tear in the Anglo time continuum. 

She is your typical HR type, uptight, twitchy, with clipped sentences and over pronounced vowels. The type who would knife you, anyone, rather than take the blame for a failure and not break a sweat. You can tell, as she is too rehearsed, too interested, too nice. Her office is analy clean, not a paper or pen out of place and there she is on the other side of the desk turning the pages of my CV with her spindly fingers. If she’d been any fake nicer, her face may well have cracked into a thousand smiling fragments falling onto the desk like so many jigsaw pieces.

I don’t really want the job once she starts talking about shared service units and the fact that nobody in the office really has any idea of what it is that I’d be doing. Certainly not her, she makes plainly clear – already moving blame off herself before I have even started the interview.

Jack calls me pretty soon after I get home to tell me that she was impressed with my experience (that perpetual positive corporate slant on everything) but she felt some of my experience was too long ago and she felt that I relied too much on my previous manager. 

Oops. That was my fault. Of course, I had to talk about Beck to a certain extent in the interview, but it was when Laurel asked me how I stayed up to date with legislative changes, a question I hadn’t anticipated and a problem I haven’t quite found a solution for since returning to work, that I hear myself mentioned Beck once too often. I felt it as soon as I said it. It was one of those don’t-say-that moments which you want to take back but can’t once you have launched into it.

I don’t really care. I don’t want to travel to St Kilda Road anyway, I tell myself. But, I do care really.

Sam continues to massage his aching limbs still. He says it is his thighs that are hurting him. And his arm. And his hand. I feel the same way about myself, although not the thighs, I wasn’t squatting down like he was, if you understand what I mean.

It rains and rains.

I feel kind of depressed about the interview and not getting the job. It still feels like a failure, even if I didn’t want the job anyway. It is a job I should have got, it is work that I should have been able to do easily.

We went to the supermarket. I felt like I was dragging my sorry arse around the shop. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Of course, I could do that job. Fuck her and her rake thin arms and her self conscious laugh and her corporate speak and her produced enthusiasm; so presented, and so put on, giving the impression that she may well explode at any moment with orgasmic good intensions for the first time ever in her life. You can tell those things sometimes, just by the way her spindly fingers walked spider-like around the edges of the paper she was holding, like even they needed relief.  Wouldn’t it be inspiring if they cut the shit just once and were honest and real and human. I wanted to see her let loose as she was masturbated doggy style with her useless Arts Degree right there on her anally clean corporate desk. I could just picture her wet snatch spraying white fluid all over her white pristine laminex surface.

Like the Carbonara sauce I was just about to make.

How dare she not give me the job, then in turn giving me the opportunity to turn her down?

I looked down at the button mushrooms in my hand.

All irrational thoughts, absolutely. Maybe it was not getting the job? Maybe it was me coming down? Who knows. I felt sad about the world.

I shook my head.

“How many mushrooms do you want in the sauce?”

“That looks like enough,” said Sam. “We need to get bacon from the deli.”

“Sure.”

“What are you thinking about, you seem lost in your thoughts?”

“Oh… nothing.” I tried not to return to Laurel screaming the house down.

The Spaghetti Carbonara, with mushrooms, was lovely. We left some for Shane, but he didn’t come home. I presume he had gone to Sydney, which pisses me off, as I don’t want to cook for him anyway and then to save some, which he didn’t eat. 

I know, I know, he cooks for me. He does, it is true. But, I don’t particularly want to return the favour when he can’t eat gluten because it generally means we are cooking dishes specifically designed for him. I don’t want to make allowances for that, it makes it all too hard. It’s funny that people with some sort of food allergy always think it is perfectly okay to change everyone’s menu to suit them.

We watched Friends in bed until we were both falling asleep. It was the one about Ross cheating when he and Rachel were on a break. After which, I got the DVD out of the cupboard and we continued to watch the DVD.

Not a Job Interview

Oh my it is raining, makes you not want to leave the house, really. But, when you are unemployed and the cleaner comes, what choice do you have, I ask you?

Sam and I are still a bit plain, lying in bed listening to the sounds of the morning. Sam asked when Guadalupe was going to arrive? I glanced at the clock, it was 10.30. I crept over to the door and opened it a crack to see if I could here the sound of the vacuum, I couldn’t. I crept down the stairs and poked my head around the wall into the atrium. There were plastic buckets and mops, clearly Guadalupe was here. Got to get the hell out of the house, I thought, as I scurried back up the stairs to Sam.

I gave Guadalupe some of the crème Easter eggs. She seemed really pleased to receive them. Maybe she has never eaten one.

Sam and I went Lygon Street and ate Malaysian. Sam is still hobbling, poor old man. We both ate Nasi Lemack curried chicken, I think, one of my favourite dishes. The raindrops fell, and not just on the outside either.

We went to Sam’s house, escaped. We watched TV and entertained ourselves on our laptops next to each other, leaning with our backs against the leather couch as the day floated away.

We picked all of the mandarins off Sam’s laden mandarin tree in between the raindrops. It was covered in fruit for the first time, dark green and brilliant orange. We ended up with five supermarket plastic bags worth.

Jack called. I ignored him. Oh fuck it, I thought, as I looked at the screen. Work can wait.

Jack called again. I answered. Stupid, really, what was I thinking. He had some job in St Kilda Road he wanted to put me up for. 

“Sure,” I said.

“You always say sure,” said Jack. “I like that about you.”

He called back a bit later. I ignored him. What if he wanted me to go to an interview tomorrow? I so don’t want to go for an interview tomorrow.

We headed back to my place around 10pm. When I got home there was a message from Jack on my home phone. “They want to see you tomorrow.”

Sharp inhale of breath. Really?

yellow and black

The Day Still Had Holes In It

I woke up at 9am. Sam didn’t stir. I came downstairs. Sam appeared sometime later. Apparently, I passed out last night, not unusually. I will always be grateful for my sleeping ability, especially after taking drugs. Eventually, I just stop, sleep, konk out, pass out, whatever you want to call it. Sam couldn’t sleep and he was up scratching around for valium he couldn’t find, but he did manage to find serapax.

I built a fire, it was cold. It was grey and overcast.

There were lots of TV ads for football and clearly the meth was still working in my blood system, as I kept picturing the players like the guys from the porn, with enormous cocks hard and ready. All of those fit footy lads were spinning my brain.

Daniel MacPherson was on good morning TV. He’s sexy, he was causing dirty thoughts in my head. Ah!

I say all of this because the meth seemed to work for a long time, a day at least, probably two days after taking it, which is unusual really.

Jane, next door, had her German woofer sanding chairs all afternoon, until it drove me crazy. I finally went in around 7pm and asked him to stop. He was very apologetic and said he would stop immediately. He’s very cute standing there with his blond hair and his track pants and his German accent.

I can see that I am going to have to go and talk to Jane. The woofa said there were many many chairs, so clearly she isn’t sanding them for home use. So, she can just go and get herself a proper work shop to sand many chairs for her commercial, or whatever, project.

Sam and I tried to do productive things, mostly this was trying to pick out the non-fisting porn from Shane’s fisting porn from his hard drive. But really we ended up masturbating sitting next to each other at the coffee table. So much for deciding what to copy from Shane’s hard drive, but the meth was still swirling in our veins, clearly.

Shane went to slut yoga and bought home baked potatoes afterwards. We were back wanking to porn when he did. 

Quick! Shane’s home!”

Sam is scheming to do more. He wants to take a month off before he finds a new job and he wants to fit in one more session before that happens.

“Can we call Guido?”

“Have you called Guido?”

“Should we give Guido a call?”

Oh, I don’t know. It is one of those things you know you shouldn’t be doing. It is one of those things you know you like too much.

But…

Now is the opportunity. Now is the moment.

However, I haven’t contacted Guido in years.

But Shane has gone to Sydney and he can’t get any for us.

What is one to do?

It was a quiet day, gentle, more talk than action. The day still had holes in it, we ached – legs, arms, other bits. But, I’m sure it was all still working, and I didn’t feel tired.

Louis

 

His name is Louis. He is a really nice guy, supportive to all his friends, loved by everybody he meets. Everybody loves Louis.

The Day After

I just had to stop in the morning, early, some time after daylight, some time after Shane went to work. I came down stairs and got a large glass of Up & Go. I love that feeling, I thought, as I stood in the kitchen. Buzzing and wobbly, feeling like I might come apart, knowing that I wont, as the light is brittle and fragile and “otherworldly” in my sight. The thrill of good angst started in my legs, zinged up my spine and buzzed in my jaw.

I took the Up & Go back to Sam who drank the lot. I had to come back down stairs and get another.

Then it was back to bed.

How many hours is that? I’d lost count. Heading towards 24 hours. It would be 24 hours by the time I come back to see the day again, I thought that was good value, even if I wasn’t quite so sure where in the day I exactly was.

I came down in the evening and heated up the Japanese Curry, under Sam’s orders. I cooked the rice and heated up the curry in the Microwave. He said heat it in a saucepan on the stove, but the microwave seemed like a better prospect. It wasn’t.

Sam came down eventually. He couldn’t eat it. We sat at the coffee table and he just looked at me with a sad look. No, he couldn’t eat.

“I’ve had two mouthfuls.”

“Two mouthfuls?”

“Yup.”

“I know, even if you don’t feel like it, you will feel much better later if you eat something now.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You still need fuel.”

He shook his head slowly. “No, no I can’t.” He looked down at his food bowl brim full with rice and curry and then looked back at me. He looked sad, or maybe uncomfortable.

We went to sleep at midnight. I passed out, the sleep of the dead. I’m lucky, I can always sleep. Eventually, I stop, and fall asleep. I never have to take pills to sleep, no matter what I have taken. Sam fell asleep but woke some time afterwards. He tried to wake me, looking for the valium? I was out to it and am impossible to wake once I am there. Sam couldn’t sleep. The valium was no where to be found. But the Serapax was. He took half.

Jaw Shakingly Good

I woke up and gazed at Sam. His first words were, “When is she leaving?” 

He’s funny. Bad drugs! Or is that, bad drug boy! Actually, I’m surprised he could hold out so long, and still say so little. He was so well behaved, all things considered. No, really. He said nothing last night, he just enjoyed the company… of old friends getting together.

When I went up stairs to get Sam’s phone to download the photos I took on it yesterday it was 11.11. “Hello beautiful,” a lovely sentiment scrawled on the footpath. It is almost a metaphor for 11.11. My Android phone has a shit camera, and if there isn’t something wrong with it, it should put people off buying Android, so I always try to use Sam’s iPhone.

When I came back down, I looked over at Sam sitting on the couch and he pointed with his thumb, as though to say, get rid of her, with that cheeky grin on his face. God he’s cute, is all I could think.

I could only laugh.

LouLou left after midday, all smiles, with us all promising to do it again soon. We didn’t wait much longer after that, we got busy with preparations. Sam dashed to Woolies to get supplies, as I had supermarket credits. He bought Up and Go and yogurt. Sam’s Up and Go makes me laugh and makes me realise how sensible it is all at the same time.

We had left over Japanese curry to eat later.

We borrowed Shane’s porn collection... and, of course, his taste is fisting and pissing. “But there is a lot of other stuff on there,” said Shane. “You’ll just have to pick through it.” He also lent us his hard drive with hours of porn on it.

There was a sense of anticipation, a wave of excitement. The butterflies in my stomach felt free to launch themselves upwards with no sense of trepidation any longer. No holding back, the time had come, this was the moment.

Chills up the spine, shaking down my nerves, like someone had walked across my grave, as they say. We no longer had to do anything, everything was done, immanently we’d be indulging.

We smoked our first pipe, late afternoon, we had the house to ourselves. Sam’s fingers always get twitchy when it is pipe smoking time. He get’s busy with the ritual, out comes the box, out comes the damp towel. He always starts it off, melting the crystals into that molten pool of white intensity. The white smoke starts to swirl around in the bowl and the delicate balance of burning and inhaling starts.

And then I had a shower.

And so beginth the journey. Night becomes day, day becomes night. We entered that delicious wasteland where we would stay for a while. Crusoe and Friday marooned on their island.

The afternoon fades away, slides out of sight like a well greased pig. 

We churned through the porn. We only played one DVD as it turned out. Huge cocks and greased arses and then they put those gloves on. “Oh no, not the gloves, fast forward, fast forward! Ah! Oh! Er! No!”

Sam squatted next to the bed a lot, I didn’t form complete thoughts about why? And the floorboards felt like an ice rink afterwards. 

I felt hungry and cold at various stages, but didn’t put a complete thought pattern together to do something about it.

We got lost in film and in between we kissed. And existed with a buzz and a hard edge that is all at once comforting and thrilling.

Oh, I love that feeling, it is moreish like good chocolate and delightful like a warm bed and all encompassing like a goose feather quilt.

It is a complete reality, fully contained in your brain. It is a great place to be, is a wonderful place to travel to with a fellow traveller. I love it. I can’t imagine what I might do if I was independently wealthy, how I might live? I can fully understand why such people end up in rehab. Why wouldn't you?

Of course it is a foolish notion, like chasing your tail. What could you call it, the state of ever diminishing returns? Your first hit is always the best and everyone that follows is trying to match the first.

We sat next to each other mindlessly as Sam packed the pipe yet again. And again. The acid taste imbued my taste buds, as I watched the white smoke swirl in the glass ball, as I inhale until I can no longer inhale… ah!.. ah!... ah! and I hand the pipe and the lighter over to Sam as I hold the smoke in as long as I can.

I felt great! I knew I would, of course. I love it, as humans have since the dawn of time, when they ate that first berry, or consumed that mushroom and enjoyed the change and the experience.

Dinner at Home with the Gang

When I went upstairs to get my phone it was 11.11. Ah, 11.11? Funny thing that, still. I guess it will be with me for the rest of my life. All the literature on it says that I should feel how the world feels each time I see it. Maybe? Or, maybe I should just think that everything is right with the world as long as it continues to happen? I don’t know which. I have to say I find it comforting though, there is a kind of sense that the world is right, a comforting inevitability, or something.

We walked to have a Japanese lunch in Carlton, in Cardigan Street. I so love taking street photos and I saw a gorgeous shot outside a shop on the way. Hello Beautiful was written on the bluestones.

It was a lovely day for a walk through the Exhibition Gardens. The sun was shining.

Sam said not to get the curry, very keen about this he was. I think it was because we’d been eating our own Japanese curry. Or is it because he likes to call the shots? I’m not sure. 

The first day of us both being unemployed. Lovely.

Sam had realised by now that now was the perfect time for his White Goddess to visit. He planned to take a month off before returning to work. His eyes were sparkling every time he mentioned it, and he mentioned it often.

Okay, so much for just doing drugs at New Year as a treat, as something special. So much for not wanting a boyfriend who wants to do drugs every opportunity they get. So much for putting our relationship in jeopardy and our sex life in danger of becoming a wasteland without drugs, without being revved up on the stuff. So much for my noble ideas and lofty principles, hey?

Strangely, as is often the case, Mr Let’s do meth, Let’s do meth, let’s do meth, ad infinitum, is mute when it comes to asking the question of the person who can get it for him. I have to lead the horse to the water trough and then work his jawbones to ask the question.

Shane went to South Yarra to get the drugs. He said he’d go, just like that, we didn’t have to talk him into it or anything , he just agreed. His buddy, Pete, sells it out of his shop in South Yarra. He came back with change, as it was only $50 a point, which is really cheap. We should have go more instead of the cash, but Shane can’t think laterally, he can only follow orders.

LouLou arrived late in the afternoon, I was surprised she said late afternoon, but I guess she was excited, she was excited. She parked out the back. Her first sleep over, since the boys sold Bolago and moved up north. She bought pot and I started rolling almost immediately that she got there. You bet I did, I was excited to see my green goddess. And I kept rolling. Shane came home with some synthetic marijuana so when the real stuff ran out, I kept rolling with the fake. It was a bit hard to tell if the fake was any good, after getting stoned on the real stuff.

LouLou bought crème eater eggs. She bought a mountain of them. David was supposed to be coming over to go to Trough with Shane, so we thought we could give him some of the chocolate, maybe all. Piggy does as piggy does. I mean, I’m not judging anyone by standards I wouldn’t judge myself by. Fat David!

Anthony arrived with flowers, lovely. He came by taxi, he doesn’t drive much any more. Shane bought home a huge bottle of red wine, for every one to drink. But Anthony announced he couldn’t drink wine, it is his enemy now that he has given it up recently, and he headed to the shop to get beer.

Shane questioned the decision, which I thought was a little insensitive, as Anthony has been a complete piss pot on wine until recently, often starting to drink before lunch.

Stupid Shane.

Anthony had been keen to go out for dinner, but instead we cooked pasta. We cooked chorizo sausage sauce with white wine. Shane, of course, had his own special pasta. Everybody seemed to like it.

We watched Graham Norton. He's very funny, one of the great talk show compares, I think. And a big poof, which of course we like. He’s like sunshine in the afternoon, like a lovely friend.

We talked all night. 

Driven to Distraction

The next door neighbours are using a hand sander to sand, what I could see through a crack in the fence, a piece of furniture of some sort. It has been going for hour’s non-stop. It is nearly driving me nuts. Ah!

My next door neighbour has tourists, of some sort stay, who seem to do work around her house. Today must be sanding fucking furniture day. OMG! It has been going all morning.

zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz

and that's not sleeping zzzz's.

Still, I'm not sure if it is too much, or if I am just being irritable? Although, really ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I am grumpy now a days. No, I am. I know that. I don't know if it is losing my job, last year. If it the situation with my mum. If it is the fact that the world is going to hell, clearly; which part of free market capitalist society is working? If it is just TOO much information with bad news continually rammed down our throats by the media, I don't know. Is it it a feeling of why exactly am I doing this for? What is the point? Where does all of this lead?

Is the sanding noise on one side of my house, and the building work on the other side of my house. Is it the "general attack" we feel we are all under in modern society? Is it the collective noise of the world, the advertising, the people, the con artists, the incompetence, the stupid, all yapping on to get their cut?

Or is it the result of having smoked pot for years? And now having given up?

I don't know what it is. But my sensible mate, Jan, says she has gone onto happy pills, anti depressants and she feels great. I reckon I'm going to go to the doc and ask him for some.

“Give me some of them happy pills I’ve been hearing about, to fix me up, will ya?”

I want drugs to make all of this… a general arm sweep of the sad looking world… look good again. I want the rose coloured glasses of youth. I want drugs to recalibrate my brain chemistry. I want to feel vibrant and energised and enthusiastic again.

And I want it now.

It Has Already Happened

I watched a documentary on ancient Egypt and it is now thought that the once biggest and most sophisticated society in the world was destroyed by severe climate change.

And now, not unlike Rome, while the whole world fiddles, it looks like it is going to happen again.

The Egyptian society didn't fail due to man made pollution, of course, but by sustained natural drought, which is different to today. But, it still failed due to climate change. It was still a large, modern civilisation which was ceased to exist due to climatic circumstances.

So it has already happened.

I say this because I think we get so cocky that it wont happen today. I think deep down most western people on some level don't believe it will happen today.

So cocky that we won't curb our use of power, so cocky that we wont even stem the rate of increase. In a time when all climate scientists say we should be reducing our power needs, it is increasing at a greater rate than ever before.

Cold Cold Cold

It is freezing this morning. It poured with rain all night. It really poured down. Winter is here, but you know, thanks to global warming, it might well be summer again next week.

Ha ha.

It feels like a Saturday.

But, of course, it is that odd day where Australia celebrates the huge failure and the enormous loss of life that was Australia's war effort in the first world war, as though, some how, we were victorious.

I never quite understand it.

Don't you love this car. It was designed back in the days when creative minds designed cars and not computers. 
How cool is it?

Success from Failure

I slept fitfully, thinking about my current assignment. Well, to tell you the truth, I slept okay, but I was laying in bed before sleep enveloped me stressing big time about the mess I had to pull together. Was I going to manage it? Was I going to fail? Was this going to be the first company, so early in my return to (company name) that was going to ask to have me replaced? You know, essentially, their incompetence doesn’t figure in their relationship with my employer, one of the problems with the type of work I do, especially when I am new and haven’t built a positive profile with my employer as yet. It is only my skill that is on trial here.

It was raining as I headed to work this morning. Did I think this was ominous? Maybe? What did it mean? The tears of hell raining failure down upon me. I pulled the umbrella, which Sam gave me, (which I have suspected for a long time was a waste of time carrying around in my brief case) from my brief case and popped it open above my head. I buttoned up my suit jacket and pulled it tight around me. I weaved between the heavy traffic and the raindrops and the puddles on the ground. I felt damp just being out in it even if the rain wasn’t, actually, hitting me, it was just that kind of morning.

I got to the front door of my office and took a big breath. People say that I am negative, people close to me. Actually, they don’t have to tell me, I know it myself. Too negative – some where along the line I have become a glass half empty person. I’m trying to change it. I exhaled and said to myself, I am going to pull this off. I know what I am doing. I am good at what I do. 

I was in the office at 8.26, the others were still to arrive. Oh, how long do I have to wait? How much time am I going to waste sitting here drinking coffee, waiting to be signed in. Fortunately, Person Number 1 arrived a short time later.

Person Number 2 was later than yesterday, something about families and children and husbands, you know the usual story.

Okay, straight into it. I sorted everything and got stuck into it. Less thinking, more action. Just get on with it, stop worrying about every little detail. The trouble is, that I hate making mistakes. Everything proceeds more smoothly if it is done right the first time. Life is easier this way.

Oh yes, did I mention that I am accessing the information remotely, as it is something they have only just taken over and it is all still located in the other office. So, I have to save everything as a PDF file to Finance drive and then I have to access the Finance drive and print it from there.

Shane told me later that they didn’t have their printer set up properly and that it didn’t have to be that way with remote access.

Remarkably, despite everything, I was finished by midday. I had a deadline today.

Person Number 1 and I checked it off and that process went smoothly.

We had it all finished by 15.00. 

The idiot who normally does this work has called all her finance files Bob, so when I saved them they saved over each other. Why would you name your files the same name and why would you name them Bob?

Of course, nothing would load into the banking system, as it was all feared to the other Office.

I created the creditor files, which I had never done before, but I decided to make no admissions and just wing it. They, of course, didn’t work, so I had to call (my company) and sort that out, which I did.

I was walking out the door with Person Number 1 at 16.30 and she turned to me and said, “I don’t know how we would have completed all of that with out you?”

That was nice to hear.

So, victory was snatched from the jaws of victory. An assignment where I suspected that I might have failed had been turned into a positive. My reputation was saved and I have built upon it. I don’t give myself enough credit. No, I don’t.

After all, I do know what I am doing. I am good at what I do. It is just the other idiots that I can’t speak for.

I met Sam after work. I was in the city by 17.00 hungry. I realised I had miss lunch altogether. In fact, I’d given them half an hour for free by not taking lunch. Bugger.

Sam promised he’d be finished by 17.30 sharp.

Sharp! I messaged back.

Yes, he messaged back.

It was wet and cold. The rain was making all the seating in the city unusable. So, I bought dim sims, fried of course, and headed to Sam’s office. I quite like my Miki card. It’s good. Touch on. Touch off. Touch on. Touch off.

I sat in the foyer of Sam’s office and read the MX. It was like a journey back, I hadn’t read the MX for ages.

We got on the 96 instead of the 86. I wanted to get off at Spring Street but Sam dug his heals in and refused.

“No!” And wouldn’t budge.

“But there is no shelter at the Gertrude Street corner and there is shelter at Spring Street.

“No!”

“I don’t know why you can’t understand that?”

“No! No pissing around here. Let’s go as far as we can on this tram.”

We bought Indian on the way home.

I lit a fire.

We watched The Voice, Big Bang Theory and Top Gear.

We went to bed and watched Kitchen Nightmares, much to Sam’s protests.

I Just Have To Get It Right, I Have No Choice

I’m off to South Melbourne for two days.

I was up at 7am, before Sam’s iPhone chimes. I ate muesli, Sam didn’t.

We walked into the city together. We stopped at BreadTop to buy Sam a bun. I wanted one too, he didn’t see why considering I had already eaten breakfast.

I bought a Miki. My first tram ride and I got off without touching off. Bugger. Maximum fare, apparently.

I caught a tram along Swanston Street. There was a huge crowd on the corner of Flinders Street, like a grand final crowd. Of course, I think is this what cost cutting has led to. Shane tells me later that Elizabeth Street was closed.

Weird old St Kila Road, the trams are packed heading into destination weirdsvillle.

I got to work at 8.45.

The salt mines, (name of company), are a nightmare. They have just taken over the project I am doing and they, literally, don't know what they are doing. They (name) continually told me the wrong thing… or I misunderstood her… or she is not very good with instructions… or, as I know is the case, she doesn’t really know herself. The woman instructing me, (name), while very nice, had a very strong accent and I can't understand her a lot of the time. And the paperwork has been sent from another office and it has been scanned so lightly that it is barely legible and I am having trouble reading any of it. Add to this that the previous person doing the work uses processes that are beyond any sort of understanding.

By 11am I was thinking, THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!

By lunchtime, I was wishing I wasn’t continuing with this assignment over the next month.

After lunch, I was thinking don’t be such a fucking pussy, pull this together and pull it off. Just pull it off.

Sunny Sunday

The first thing I knew was that I was getting my face slapped with moisturiser. Sam’s handsome face was looking down at me.

“I got the call, I’ve got to go.”

His project is finally being launched. It is being released over the weekend. All of the IT boys were warned that they could well be called in at sometime over the weekend.

“Oh.” Half asleep. “Okay.”

Mumble mumble mumble “Get ready.” Mumble mumble mumble. “Lunch.” Mumble mumble mumble. “Gotto go.”

And then Sam was gone. “Fucking Liberty! Fucking Liberty!”

Some how, as I was to expected to understand later, that his parting mumble meant that I should get up, get ready and be ready for the call from Prince Sus to go and meet him in the city.

I was up at 10.00am, I remember it being all zeros, 10.00. For some reason I always here Bubble saying that. “One… O… O… O.”

I had muesli and coffee.

Laptop on the coffee table.

11.30am

Second pot of coffee.

12.15

I’m ready. Have you showered? Come in and pick me up, asked Sam.

I was still in my pyjamas, of course.

It was a lovely warm sunny day walking into the city.

We eat a Japanese lunch at QV, like boyfriends who lunch. The sun shone down.

I see the first Z number plate in Lonsdale Street outside the old Myer Lonsdale Street shop, actually, more outside Melbourne Central. Yes, Victorian number plate that begins with Z. I always like to note when and where I see each of the first letters.

Sam had a $15 hair cut in Elizabeth Street. He wanted me to have one too, but call me old fashioned but I have two days work in the next two days and I like to have a haircut preceding days where I can put colour in my hair, so as to get maximum colouring of the just cut greys.

We walk home from Elizabeth Street in the correct direction... despite Sam pointing off in the direction of Footscray to walk home, when I go to cross the road. He looks perplexed and points west.

We made baked potatoes. Lovely they were too. Baked potatoes for two nights, what is that, roughly $5 each, probably less, because these two fat boys ate the equivalent of two serves each Saturday night.

We watched Beaconsfield.

Slept In

I slept in until 12.20, it was lovely. A certain person wasn’t as pleased about it as I was.

“You sleep the day away.”

Really? I thought. I was just having a bit of a lie in… and it was nice.

Sam made Chinese pancakes, infused with spring onion. They are funny things. They are well kneaded dough, more than batter. They are rolled and kneaded and rolled and kneaded and rolled and kneaded and rolled again. Then they are fried in a pan, rather than batter poured in to cook. 

I’m a happy contented little home body, but Sam feels the need to head out doors and achieve something.

He dragged us out the door for a walk at, what I thought was about 13.30, only to be corrected by an exasperated Sam who told me it was 16.30, with wide eyes and “that look.”

“13.30? How can it be 13.30 when you didn’t get up until after twelve?”

He’s gorgeous, my boyfriend.

We bought ice creams in Lygon Street. It was Sam’s suggestion, I swear. He had Durian. I had strawberry and passion fruit.

The sun was shining in Lygon Street and the many punters were happy there. We sat at some out door tables and watched the world walk by.

“I had to get you out of the house for fresh air.”

“We should have gone bike riding…”

“We’re walking instead.”

We walked to Swanston Street and passé the uni and all the fresh faced students mingling about. We walked down Elgin with it’s view into the heart of Fitzroy. I suddenly wanted to go to a movie at Nova, you know, for the afternoon, it was only 17.30. It seemed like the perfect thing to do on a lazy Saturday afternoon. But, we’d only had the Chinese pancakes as our sustenance for the day and Sam had shifted mentally to food mode.

I stepped sideways at Drummond Street, as though I was going to a movie, just out of Sam’s sight, who kept walking down Elgin Street.

I waited and waited and waited for him to come back, but he didn’t. I can out-wait the best of them, if need be, but my enthusiasm began to wane, I can be determined, but so can Sam. And I didn’t want it to get into childish pig headedness and it to turn nasty, stupidly, so I relented.

Sam was no where in sight. Then I saw him far down the street with his jumper tied around his waist. He was glancing back, although I’m sure he was trying to convey the opposite impression, because he seemed to spot me and sat down.

“Why didn’t you want to see a movie?”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re hungry?”

“I’m hungry!”

“Oh.”

“When will you understand that you don’t get between me and my food?”

I bowed and did my best Sale of the Century model arm swish in the direction Mr Crankypants wanted to head.

It was an emergency food situation, as Sam would often label it. So we headed straight to Woollies. We were going to head down Brunswick Street to look at the ingredients in the shop with the hot potato boy, however, any deviation at this point was now considered off limits.

We bought the ingredients for baked potatoes. It cost $22 – why I mention this will become clear. If that made one meal of baked potatoes, we wondered if it was, in fact, worth it, as we walked home? That’s about the same cost as shop bought potatoes.

We made two huge serves of baked potatoes, we thought, as we looked down at the two large bowls sitting on the coffee table. In fact, we probably could have halved them. We, in fact, didn’t manage to finish both, there were potato bodies left over, but still, potatoes are cheap.

You know, you can put everything through the supermarket self service as potatoes.

The thinking at my place is that buying take away is cheaper than cooking for oneself at home. It always seems to cost more to shop at the supermarket than buying a simple meal for two.

The dissenting voice is that the quantities are the key. Buying all the ingredients may cost more than buying for two, but that is only because the quantities purchased will usually make more like six serves than two and there will probably be leftovers for lunch the next day.

Walking to the Supermarket

All Change

Ah, there you go, three more days back at the salt mines, unexpectedly, done, over, finito.

Smoking Brenda had her "woman's op," or some such thing and then could stand up for the rest of the week, or couldn't sit down, or couldn't pass one leg passed the other, so I was called back in, as if on a long elastic band, like a puppet on a string.

It was nice being back, some where familiar, my first assignment, home sweet home, hey? Stockholm Syndrome is an easy trap. Mother's breast milk. Set me free.

Still, perving on the wog boys, nice. Angelo was his usual charming self. Branco, with the hot hot arse left today with me. Well, he didn't leave with me, today was his last day, as it was with me.

And tomorrow off. Yay. A good week. I've got a list of things to do.

I start in the inner suburbs on Monday, southside. I'll be back on the trams, back on the 86, actually the 96. Yay! I miss inner suburbs PT.

I'm glad it's not St Kilda Road, though. They are all a bit whack in St Kilda Road. A bit... fingers doing circles around each ear. I guess that's where I'll be next, now that I have mentioned it, isn't that the way it goes. I don't know why they are cracked, but always found them to be a bit weird in St Kilda Road. It's like they have a CBD chip on their shoulder, or something. CBD envy.

I've got a day in Fitzroy coming up. There should be more of that. I can just wander around the corner. Lovely.

Still, tomorrow off comes first.

What a Lovely Morning

What a lovely morning, I'm lying in bed watching the sun shine in through my balcony doors. Ah.

Oh, what to do today? I guess, I need to organise some work. I don't know why my guy, Jack, hasn't called me with new assignments. And while I'm quite loving having a few days off, it may not be a good example to set. You know, it may say that I am not so keen on working. It may say that I don't want to work. It may say that I am not serious about my career. Which, of course, I'm not, on all three counts, but the trick is not to let Jack know that.

Bloody hell. A boy can't even rest without havin bludge g to give it thought... can't with out processing it.

We've all got to work, I know. It is what makes the world go around, it's what greases the wheels of industry, after all. The world would fall into anarchy, if we all didn't work. The world will cease to spin, if I don't find a job. Yes, I know all of that.

I was just processing these thoughts... comfy in bed, at 9.15.

Then my phone rang and it was jack, just as I decided calling him was the first thing to be done today. Smoking Brenda has had a "small operation," you know one of those inexplicable operations as far as boy's understand of such things and won't be able to pass one leg passed the other, or some such thing, until Friday.

"Christian, can you head into (name of company) asap?"
"Oh, yes." Grimace. "Sure." My world spun 360 degrees. "Thanks Jack." Boo hoo!

Long Slow Monday

It's been a long, slow day. Sam left at 7.30am. I think, I told him for the millionth time that I did have to go to work. He rubbed the excess moisturiser on my face, squeezing my cheeks hard at the end of it. He refused to tickle my feet, even though I pushed them out from under the doona and made adorable tickle-my-feet noises, which he says are try hard and annoying, or he says they are something like that.

Then I sat up in bed with plumped pillows, my lap top and my doona. And the morning disappeared, with three cups of brewed coffee.

Jack, the guy who allocates me my assignments has rung and initially I was pleased about that. A couple of days off would be nice, don't you think. But then I got to thinking why hasn't he called? Well, he is new and not very good at what he does and maybe, just maybe he has forgotten, or maybe it is a test. Please don't tell me I have to start calling him all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for work. Please don't tell me that? If I have to show enthusiasm and initiative to pick up assignments I'm screwed.

Then I called Steve the electrician who promised he would call me this morning to tell me what time he was coming today. The bastard wasn't answering his phone. Fucker! I called him at lunch time and by late afternoon he still hadn't called me back. Big, hunky Steve. Those shorts he always wears and those blond hair covered legs... which I have been waiting to see since March 01st. He promised he'd be here today? Do you reckon I'm ever going to see him to fix this fucking light. March 01st, April 16th?

It hasn't felt like a um, how do I put it, an enjoyable day off, not so much. I think I'm in work mode now? I kinda didn't feel so relaxed. I kinda felt like I should have been doing something else all day.

I just poured a glass of wine, you know, to relax into the day. Is that bad? 4.30pm?

I might play with some boy photos.

 

We made French Toast for the first time. We made a stack of them. May I suggest that you don’t try and eat a stack of French Toast. OMG! My hand is rubbing my fat stomach at the thought. We covered them in maple syrup, maybe we needed a hug pile of berries. I think so.

The mornings have been so lovely, the sun has been shining down like warm honey. It has been nice to get out into those sunny days, with a walk through the gardens. The Exhibition Gardens have been alive with people.

We headed off to eat dumplings in La Trobe Street. The food is great, but the restaurant is always very hot..

Then it was off to put my tattslotto on, my last hope for an early retirement. Of course, we looked around Harvey Norman at QV, window shopped. Is it still called window shopping when you are inside?

I took my camera with me. The afternoon light was lovely. We lay out on the display lounges and I took photos of the people passing by. That kid was so cute, he was very keen on having his photo taken.

Sam cooked curry. Yum, yum.

We watched Deskset with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey, which I bought in Big W. Sam said it was a stupid movie.