The Orange Monster

The only explanation that really makes any sense as to why people support Donald Trump is that he makes them feel good about their racism and their bigotry.

In The Park

We are walking around the off lead part of the park in Brunswick on our way home. There is a gorgeous dark-haired, olive skinned 18 year old, 19 year old, 20 year old, something like that, guy shooting hoops on his own. He has on an olive green t-shirt and black shorts the colour palette of which suits his dark complexion perfectly. I stop and watch him while I wait for Brun to catch up. He makes a shot and then his basketball runs off across the grass and he has to retrieve it, while I stand and watch him. As the gorgeous guy runs back, he smiles at me. 

I smile at him.

 “I can run fast,” he says. Broad smile across his face.

Oh, I see, I think.

He runs behind a nearby park bench and says, “I have got it from here once.”

“Good for you,” I say.

“That’s just once in my life,” he says. “Just once.” He laughs. He throws the ball at the hoop again, and it goes through. “Ohhhhh,” he says with the biggest smile.

“Wow!” I say.

I walk over and grab Brun and handsome basketball guy’s basketball rolls to me. I kick it to him, as I pick up after Brun.

“The ball likes you,” he says.

“Because it came right over to me?”

“Yes.” He smiles broadly. “Don’t know why,” he says. He laughs. If the situation was different, I may have thought he was flirting. But, he was just innocence personified. Handsome innocenence.

“I guess it’s better to be liked, than not liked,” I say. I cringe just a little at what I had just said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yes,” he says. “It is.”

I walk up to Sam. “He sure is gorgeous, even if he is a bit special,” I say.

“Good bye,” he calls after me.

I turn around. “Good bye,” I say.

“Thank you,” he says. He grabs his ball and he runs up the big hill in the park at speed. And he's gone.

I presume he was thanking me for getting the ball through the hoop at a distance for the second time in his life, although I don’t really know what I had to do with it.

Alexie Navalny
you don't have to be Einstein to know he was killed by Vladimir Putin

 

What Time Is IT?

4.15pm on a Saturday. It should be 4.15pm on a Saturday forever. 4.15pm on a Saturday, what a good time.

Life should be a never ending Saturday afternoon. Always the promise of another day off to come.

That would be grand, uncomplicated. 

The sun would always be shining. Of course. Perhaps a breeze. Gentle as ease.

Life would be simple.

Nourishing.

With a Norah Jones soundtrack.

Life should be a dream, isn't that what they say?

Friday

My creeper hasn't been flowering these last few years, but this year it is, pretty aren't they. I'd almost forgotten what they looked like.

I take the dogs for a walk, it is overcast but warm.

Walking down Brunswick Street, one of my pet hates when walking the dogs is slow human walkers, you can never seem to get away from them, because even if you do pass them, dogs stop and sniff, so you can never really get past them. And just when they’ve got far enough ahead, where you can forget about them, like has happened today, they stop and gaze at some architectural feature, or take a phone call, or just gaze at the day and you catch up to them and then you’re walking with them again.

I know, hardly a problem in the greater scheme of things. It’s just, you know, slightly annoying, with them constantly in the way, and I can’t just relax and enjoy the day in my own bubble, as walking the dogs in my own bubble is a form of meditation, just me and my woofs.

To be fair, today it was just some old bloke seemingly out enjoying his day too, I just wished he’d go and do it on the other side of the road.

Anyway, I managed to shake him, eventually.

After we get back, I contemplate the day.

Late morning, the sun finally comes out, and the day sparkles.

I make, I don't remember what number, coffee.

We eat fried rice for lunch. Home made, of course.

I go and chop up the rest of the creeper I chopped down yesterday, listening to The Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds and then Blues and Lonesome. I find that meditative too, after a fashion, standing in the gentle sun with music in my ears.

And my day off just kind of drifts away. 

Walking the Dogs, Doing The Garden

6.55am. I wake up. My day off. I hear some woman’s voice out in the street, it has quite a nasally accent.

I stand in front of the closed venetian blinds, I like the ambience they give with the morning sun behind them.

I head over to the bakery to get bread. There are police cars out the front in the street. I see the police up the lane with my neighbour Jackson Wag.

On the way back the police woman asks me if we have any more cameras?

“We have them out the back, but they face inwards.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Did something happen?” I ask.

“A burglary.”

“At Jackson Wag’s house?”

“Yes.”

I think to myself, the bulldogs should be sleeping outside to bark at burglars, but no, they are inside on their own Tempour mattresses.

7.10am. Sam is up.

7.15am. Otto is up.

I suggest to Sam that the bulldogs should sleep outside to deter burglars and he says, “No way. They might get kidnapped, or poisoned.”

I make coffee and read the news.

Lab-grown ‘beef rice’ could offer more sustainable protein source, say creators. Scientist behind hybrid carbohydrate praises its ‘pleasant and novel flavour experience’.

The biologist who first tagged a one-year-old platypus back in 2000 was astonished when it was recaptured last year, aged about 24, making it the oldest platypus found in the wild.

Lidia Thorpe calls for ‘sleazy’ MPs to be excluded from sitting weeks and fined for bad behaviour. I never know what to think about Lidia Thorpe?

Barnaby Joyce to consider taking personal leave, after being filmed lying on his back in the street wailing into his phone. No, that’s not normal behaviour, said Nat Leader Littleproud. He’s made it very clear that he not only embarrassed himself but he embarrassed his family. So it’s important that we work through this methodically around what are the underlying causes of this. And one of those is around a mixture of the medication he was provided with alcohol. He acknowledges that. But there are other driving force that I won’t divulge. If Barnaby wants to make that public, it’s up to him. Why do people keep re-electing this disaster?

8am. I make vegemite toast and a peanut butter end piece and more coffee.

9:36am. I take the dogs for a walk. It’s a sunny morning, quite lovely really.

The sun is shining beautifully as we walk down the west side of Brunswick Street.

10am. We do TattsLotto in the Brunswick Street TattsLotto shop. There was a gorgeous 20 year old blonde boy in the TattsLotto shop before us, black shorts and a black singlet, worth looking at as we wait. The handsome Asian guy behind the counter is always interested in the bulldogs.

We cross over Brunswick Street at Victoria Street when Brunswick Street is unusually empty of cars, just full of sunshine and blue sky.

We stop for water at the water bowl cnr Brunswick Street and Johnson Street.

Johnson Street is bathed in sunshine.

The white bull terrier is not in the window of the tattoo shop, cnr Young Street.

We stop for more water at the Faraday Café.

10:20am. A handsome 30 something blonde boy with his cream Labrador is depositing food scraps into the shoot at the house on the corner of Greaves Street and Gore Street. The dogs say hello past cnr Greeves Street. His dog’s name is Dolly. We walk up the street behind them. He’s got khaki shorts, pale blue polo top, he has nice legs and floppy hair, boy next door type. 

10:30am. We’re home.

We ate Mongolian lamb for lunch.

I lay on the couch until about 2.30pm when I decided that I just had to do something other than lie on the couch, so I went outside and chopped the side creeper. I’d noticed earlier in the day, or yesterday, or some other day recently, how over grown it was and how it really needed a good prune.

First up, I repotted a couple of plants, just to get myself in the mood. While I was looking for the right sized pot, which I keep up the side of the house, I noticed that the hole in the fence seemed to be missing. That can’t be, I think to myself. Then when I looked a little more earnestly, I could see it had been covered up. I pushed my finger into the hole to see how well it had been covered, and it was covered up quite well. It seemed permanent, and then I could only assume deliberately.

A few weeks ago, I was up the side of the house looking for pots, I bent down to inspect a couple of pots and as I came up my eye came level with the hole in the fence and I peeked through to see this rather plain girl in the sitting area, she reminded me of Ellie out The Last of Us, and I think she saw me looking at her, and I pulled my face away from the hole.

I guess she saw me looking, I thought. That is unfortunate. 

Anyway, whatever. I didn’t think any more about it. I wasn’t really one to be looking through holes in fences. Oops.

Not long after, I decided to get up on the back veranda and chop the creeper back. I got all of the stuff I needed, and then I realised as I get up on the roof at the side of the house, I’ll be able to look over and see how the hole in the fence has been covered over.

I got secateurs, gloves and a bucket and I climbed up onto the side fence and looked over. There were two of the old fashioned long wooden seedling type boxes standing on end side by side, then there were about 6 bricks piled on top of that all the way up to the hole in the fence. I laughed. That looks like something someone with no wood working skills would do. I supressed a laugh up there on the fence. She must have been serious about covering that hole. She must live her life at a level of paranoia that borders on the unbearable.

(reading back over this a day later, paranoia? Um? Just to be clear the hole in the fence looked into their kitchen/back yard. It was innocent, there was no intent to spy on anyone. I looked innocently. I guess she doesn't know this? How would I feel if someone looked through the fence at me? I don't know.)

I got up on my roof and chopped back the creeper. 

I wondered how Miss Paranoia er,  she did see me look through the hole in the fence... um? How would she react if she saw me climbing up onto the fence? (It is the only way I can climb onto my roof, which I have to do reasonably often to keep my gutters clean, otherwise they overflow and leak into my house) I wondered if she’d demand that I didn’t climb up that way as it made her feel uncomfortable, or unsafe, or exposed. 

I wondered? how she would react when I refused and asked her if there was some medication she’d stopped which she should be taking. (sometimes I can get caught up in the narrative in my head and, no, I wouldn’t say that to her) Anyway...

The creeper was all quite long, so I thought I mustn’t have pruned for some years. 

I decided to leave it long on the lane side, you know, just in case it deterred any robbers thinking it look impenetrable to climb over. I just chopped it back on our side. It wasn’t too hard to do this as it grows quite wildly up there.

I found a stash of macadamia husks under the roof over the back veranda, clearly a possum had taken advantage of the protection wild and woolly creeper provided. So, I cleaned all of that out.

5.10pm. I’d finished chopping up the creeper. My right hand got too sore to keep chopping.

I went and had a shower as I was sweaty.

5.25pm. I come back downstairs, Troy is in the kitchen.

I watched Grand Tour Car meet ups.

Sam had a body corporate meeting online for his place. I used to have to drive him to those (remember, Sam doesn't drive) boring meetings and sit through them wondering what I had done that was so bad in my life to have them inflicted upon me, or wishing everyone would just evaporate before the meeting ended, but Covid took those meetings online, so Covid was good for something.

I watched Top Gear car meet ups.

We ate luxo instant noodles with prawns and fish and tofu and asparagus for dinner.

Happy Valentine's Day, Sam. It made him laugh

 

The Big Wide World

Sam was late getting back last night, so I listened to music and tried to write a blog post, rather than watch the news. Me and the dogs curled up in the lounge room with a cool breeze blowing in from the garden as the cool change had arrived by then.

So, this morning as I ate my Vegemite toast and drank my coffee, I was somewhat surprised to read that there had been wild storms and that, amongst other things, the Wimmera is without power as their transmission towers blew over, Wantirna is without power, and the poor luvs at Phillip Island are without mobile phone connectivity, all due to wild storms across the state. And The Grampians were on fire.  

While I don’t wish any of those people ill will, the bottom line is that we got a sprinkle of rain and a cool change and that’s pretty much all I should probably care about.

I suspect the never ending psycho drama that is the news isn’t doing any of us much good.

The news is the drama, social media is the poison, what hope do we have regarding the harmony of society.

The only social media I do now is this blog, everything else is boring, I hate to say it but I don’t really care if you got new cushions for your couch, or its where the awful people hang out. You know, you make a comment on Facebook and hate spews back at you. It should be renamed Hatebook.

I just try to write stuff now. Interesting bits of life, with varying degrees of success, I’m sure. But that is what I do now. Try to be creative. My own creative, not someone else’s. Some days I have nothing much to say, but I try to write something anyway, get something down. I try to write every day. You know, make shit up. Good shit.

Another Hot day

How the bulldogs are spending their hot Tuesday

Sam's at his place while the new carpet gets installed. He's still mystified why I don't want air-conditioning; he doesn't understand why I don't want white plastic boxes on the walls of my rooms. He tells me it's nice and cool at his place, but his place has white plastic boxes attached to the walls of every room.

He's just waiting around for the carpet guy to finish installing the carpet and he must be a bit bored, and he must have rung me 10 times. 

For a while he was perving on the cute glass guy who came to fix the cracked shower screen, but he must have left now.

4pm. I lie back on the couch and put my headphones in and listen to Joan Armatrading sing the blues, with two fans pointed at me. Lovely. 

Sam won't be home for a while, I might even get some zzzzzz's in.

Otto lies on his side half under the coffee table, two of his legs in the air. Brun lies down next to him and licks his dick, what might be said to be, enthusiastically for a considerable time. When Brun is done, he licks Otto's paws.

Then when he is done, he stands up and starts licking my arm, and I pull my arm away from him.

Otto jumps up on the couch with me, and starts chewing my knee caps, which is really annoying, and I push him away.

Then the two of them are licking my legs, and I push them both away with a stern, "Enough!"

Grrrr!

What do you have to do to have a nap?

5.30pm. I gave up and took them for a walk. The cool change had come, it was nice. 

At one point in the walk, the sun shone and the rain fell in big intermittent drops, split, split. There is something incredibly lovely about a sun shower. The day sparkled at the point. I wanted to stick my tongue out and catch the rain drops on it. And just before it got too heavy in which to walk, the rain stopped, leaving just the sun to shine.

Hot Day

It was hot all day, our first taste of summer, really. Feb 12th. We had duelling fans going.

36 degrees, pretty hot. We've all gotten soft from the cool summer, we've had thus far, not that I am complaining, you understand.

I love a cool summer. as long as it is warm enough for t-shirts and shorts, I'm happy.

And when we've ignored the climate to such an extent that it can't be fixed, which from all accounts is going to be sooner than later, I won't mind searching out a cooler climate in which to live, if that is at all possible by then. Of course, the self interested politicians will probably have passed laws by then that you can't move anywhere, and that you just have to perish where you are, the situation will be so dire for all, after the politicians have moved themselves to the safest possible location they can find, of course, but, I guess, that is a conversation for another time.

Carnival Day

It's gay carnival day, you know, the day gays prove they can be just as obnoxious as the gerneral public.

Ha ha! I don't mean that, it's not true. But you know, people en mass? Shudder! Gays are, generally, not as obnoxious as the obnoxious general public. Oh, is that terrible? I guess it is? Some of the general public are my friends, although, I have to admit, my friendships have changed lately.

You know since the covid lock downs, Sam and I have become quite the home bodies, just hanging out with each other, and the woofs. Did the covid lock downs have that effect on other people? I guess they did.

Anyway, we'll get out there and parade up and down with the bulldogs. See what there is to see. Chat to who there is to chat to. Buy some street food. Listen to the music.

The sun is shining, in fact, it is one beautiful day. Should be lots of shorts and bare skin.

I've watered all of my plants, inside and out, listening to George Michael's Songs from the Last Century.

Sam has cleaned the house, even doing the vacuuming, he said it was just easier not having to listen to me continually complaining about our shit LG vacuum. Rude, I said. But, I couldn't really complain too much, as what he is saying is basically true. I'm a pain in the arse when I have to use that blood awful vacuum.

Anyway, I must drink some water, keep hydrated for a day in the sun. Now, where is my hat?

I'm now listening to Ray Charles.

We're heading out for lunch first. Then the carnival.

We Fixed The Gate

While the two fat air-conditioning guys, very nice guys, I might add, installed the new air-conditioning (at one point the two of them were on the roof singing together), we repaired a gate. 

The back gate of Sam's rental was falling apart, fallen apart so much that it was almost impossible to open and close it. And I think Sam way over estimates my handyman talent, but you know, someone having belief in you is powerful, so generally I just fake it, and get through whatever he thinks I can do. 

My dad could do anything, and when I was a kid I used to hang out with him watching him do things, and that training, although only watching, apparently gave me skills I often don't know I have, who'd have thought.

So, you know, I just fake it, that's what it feels like to me, that I have no right to be doing some of the things I do, is that imposter syndrome? I don't know. I guess, imposter syndrome is more serious than repairing a gate.

We took the gate off its frame. And I know that screws and glue are the way to fasten wood work properly, so that's what we did, glued it and screwed it. It wasn't pretty, but it was back together and solid. 

And then we reattached it to the gate frame and it opened and closed.

Then I found a tin of paint in the garage that was wood paint, so next I will give it a few coats of paint, and that will probably mask a lot of the ugly repairs.

There you have it. I have never repaired a gate before, but now the gate is repaired.

Thursday

I didn't know what to do today? I don't know why?

I've got to do all this stuff tomorrow with Sam's rental property, which will probably take the whole day, which made me nervous about today? Does that make sense? I don't know? I only have today off.

Anyway, I got up late, 7.30am.

I made porridge with peaches, but I was out of honey.

Mid morning, I take the Bulldogs for a walk. The Sun is shining.

I’m listening to Leo Sayer, all his old hits.

We meet a friend who has a shop near my place, she marvels at how big Otto has got. 

Both the bulldogs have a shit before we get out of Gertrude Street.

Have I said it was a lovely morning?

We cross over at King William Street to the other side of Brunswick Street.

We do TattsLotto in Brunswick Street with the handsome Asian guy.

We cross back to the other side of Brunswick Street at Moor Street.

Brun, why are you such an arse, why do you always go around poles the wrong way, good boy, good boy…my dictation catches me out again.

We drink at the usual dog dish outside the clothing shop in Brunswick Street getting close to Johnson Street.

A lady comes the other way, and she says, “very cute,” as she passes us by. I could pretend she is talking about me, nose twitch, but I know she isn’t

Brunswick Street, Johnson Street corner, neither of the bulldogs want a drink, so we cross over to the cooler north side of Johnson Street too late, against the red man, two straight guys coming across the road make ogle’ly eyes wanting to connect with me about the bulldogs, I can tell, but I was too busy getting over the road before the truck coming up Brunswick Street with its lefthand blinker turned, physically & emotionally.

We walk up Johnston Street on the shady side. Brun lies in the shadows just as we get to My Pet Warehouse. A lady coming up behind us says, “It’s too hot.”

 “He’s a lazy arse,” I say. I reconsidered immediately. “No, he’s just a creature of comfort.”

She goes over to say hello to Brun, she looks down at him and exclaims, “Oh my gosh, look at the size of your head.” She turns to me and says, “I have miniature poodles and their heads are this big.” She cups her hands.

We cross the street.

We’re at Faraday Café drinking out of the dog bowl. The sun is gorgeous today.

We walk up the street in the lovely morning. The bulldogs just seem to stop naturally outside the house waiting for the yappy Bunter who doesn’t appear today. He usually does.

The continuing, seemingly, never ending renovation of the house in my street and the cutest blond haired and blue eyed builder comes out from behind his truck and spots the bulldogs and says, with a big smile on his handsome face, “Look at these guys.”

I think, look at you. But, I keep walking, it just didn’t occur to me to stop, not sure why?

The giant German Shepard barks somewhere in the depths of the house just near mine. This dog is a monster. I’ve seen it a few times in the front yard, and it is huge and not friendly.

11:45am. We’re home. Brun and Otto lie out paws spread on the tiles, panting. They take turns drinking, covering the floor in their dribble.

Sausages and mashed potato for lunch, another reason for loving working from home, not that I was working today, but Sam was.

I lay on the couch and did internet things, news, YouTube, after lunch, but that wasn't very satisfying. I was determined not to go and waste my day sniffing around secondhand shops for CDs and DVDs for my movie collection. Oh obsession is such an ugly word, don't you think?

So, I pruned the garden with Brun and Otto who were being terrorists in amongst the plants. 

I chatted to my next door neighbour Jackson Wag for a while on the footpath, like a couple of Mrs Jessups.

That was okay for a while, but I just couldn't get stuck in, so it was back to the couch.

I couldn't think of anything else. It's a failure of imagination to be sure. Or, is it when you don't follow your obsessions?

The sun shone. Do you ever think that beautiful days string you out? The expected, eventual, loss of perfection and all that. I don't know?

And then suddenly it was 6pm and I wondered to myself where did the day go.

We ate prawn pasta for dinner. We watched teev.

Get Rid of The Statues

Council debate on ‘cancel culture’ erupts over future of St Kilda’s vandalised Captain Cook statue. The council narrowly voted against a community consultation on the ‘location and context’ of the explorer’s Port Phillip memorial.

Oh, who cares? I’d suggest that people only ever think about these old statues is when someone vandalises them with red paint. 

Let's get rid of the questionable statues and instead get some great street art to replace them.

Why is anyone invested in a statue of Captain Cook? It's not like anyone living knew him? What does it do to these people, play with their childhood? Is this just conservatives not wanting anything to change, yet again? Clinging to the past because out of fear.

Get rid of the mouldy old statues, get some modern art to replace them.

Taylor Swift

I've had Taylor Swift music playing all day. The biggest pop star in the world. Some say she is pop music. She is a billionaire from her music.

I didn't know any of her songs, other than Shake It Off, so I thought I should give her a listen. Biggest tour in the world. Some people ar obsessed with her.

So, I have had Midnights (3am edition) playing.

And what do I think? It has just felt like one very long song playing that never seems to stop.

Sam came downstairs at one point and commented, "Are you listening to Tay Tay?"

"Yes," I said.

He laughed and said, "Why?"

"Oh, you know, bigger than sliced bread, I thought I should give her a listen."

I have to say, I don't mind her music. Who'd have thought?

Later, not that I can remember any of it now, but it was listenable.

Toxic Laura

We have this employee at work who is known amongst execs & HR to have mental health problems and everyone is really careful when they are dealing with Laura.

I don't have much to do with her, only really once previously when she kicked up a fuss about something, and it was taken over by HR immediately, and while it had very little to do with me, it didn't take much imagination to judge where that interaction could well have led.

Anyway.

Today she emailed me out of the blue about an issue that again doesn't really have much to do with me and I didn't know why she was having the problem she was having, so I just reiterated, I guess, what could have been stating the obvious by some, but it was true none the less.

The return email from Laura told me in no uncertain terms what she felt about my help and demanded that I find the person who could help her. 

It gave me shivers. What a rude cow.

Where does mental health end and plain old toxicity begin?

I mean, I don't know. I'm glad I'm not known as the mental health person.

I switched my internal dialogue to Hallmark Greeting Card and sent her an apologetic reply email that was so gooey I had trouble pulling my mouse off the send button once I'd pushed it, and it gave me a gentle thrill that I could be so insincere and, actually, get away with it.

And she sent me a return email thanking me.

It Was Hot Today

It was hot today, 38 degrees. So, we washed the dogs and took them for a walk early, 10am'ish, harnesses on, air drying as they walked, beats towels and hair dryers. Lots of people seemed to be walking their dogs early, which I guess is hardly surprising. Golden Retrievers with their blonde hair shimmying in the sun, and Sausage Dogs, all yappy like they are. Maybe, they washed their dogs too.

We did grocery shopping. I could kind of taste the coming heat in the air as I waited in the street for Sam to finish the shopping. There is something about the air when it's going to be a scorcher, as they say. You can feel it, you can taste the heat coming on the breeze.

Then we spent the rest of the day in front of the fan.

Sam wants to get air-conditioning, but I don't want the equivalent of a white plastic box on the most prominent wall of my period lounge room. I just don't.

Sam doesn't care about machinery hanging off the wall where only my collection of art now hangs.

Eventually, climate change might take that decision out of my hands.

Brun and I went to Bunnings and got new pots and I re-potted some pot plants. I did the re-potting, you understand, Brun just watched. Well, I can't lie on the couch and watch YouTube all day. It would be nice, but, you've got to have the content for that time span.

Brun knows the moment I think I am going to drive somewhere to do an errand, like a savant. Some times its like he knows before I even do. 

He is at the door waiting for me to head out with that where-are-we-going look on his face. Then Otto picked up on Brun picking up on something and he wanted to go too, but only Brun and I went.

The car was really hot having sat in the sun all day. It was so hot the air-conditioning felt like it wasn't working initially. It was a relief to park it in the Bunnings Underground carpark out if the sun. 

I guess, we're all going to need underground carparks in future, just to survive.

Straight away we bumped into one of those Staffy/American Bulldogs that was caramel coloured all over, everything the same colour, lips, nose, eye lids, fur, and with distinct pig eyes. It seemed to be a toothless loser on the other end of the lead, which seemed odd to me as toothless losers seldom do house maintenance, that’s terrible isn’t it? I just naturally pulled Brun away from his dog, you know, as you do. I think he mumbled something like, "Woa there killer." Maybe he had adjustments to make to the methlab, and I chuckled, and then I chastised myself for such thoughts.

I got a house key cut for my car key/plastic box keyless thingie, as I took the key off that some time ago and gave it to a friend who was staying who, didn't, of course give it back. And then the other day I just grabbed my keyless car key thing to drop Sam off somewhere without taking my wallet, which has a key in it, for the first time and when I got back I was locked out of the house, so I did do that, got a key. Fuck being locked out, it is the worst feeling. Well, I guess, having your leg bitten off by a shark would be a worse feeling, but, you know, I couldn't be certain, if you know what I mean.

I had to go back and exchange the pot I bought for a bigger pot a bit later, and get the potting mix I forgot the first time, but Brun didn't want to come the second time, too hot I guess.

And then that was Sunday done, and Monday loomed.

IF Only It Was That Easy

I get up early. Otto wakes up with me. We both head downstairs.

I make coffee. Otto chews his shark on the couch.

I sit on the couch with him.

There is nothing much in the news, Gaza is in crisis, Dutton is being appauling, Squeaky Beach judged Australia's best, so I open YouTube. Sunday morning church.

One of the first clips I see is entitled,

Blow Up your BUTT and get a SIX PACK at the same time!

WTF? (Do you think the wording was deliberate for idiots like me? Of course it was.)

I thought, all the gay boys would be very impressed, if only it were that easy, I thought, so of course, I watch it while I drink my coffee.

Let's face it, if it meant abs, there would be straight boys bending over too. (Gyms would be very different, they’d be doing meth, not steroids. Chuckle)

The fact that the YouTuber is a cute blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in his undies really doesn't hurt.

Apparently, having a big beefy butt is en trend for guys now.

Saturday

We take the woofs for a walk in the morning.

By early afternoon, we’re eating dumplings in Clayton. We ate noodles followed by fried dumplings at a dumpling house. Clayton Road shopping strip was jumping with people.

There is a big group that is very noisy at the next table, I’m wishing them dead as I type this. Funny if someone blew the place up.

Just as we are finishing, A a young chubby blonde queen with daisy hairpins in his lank blonde hair skips after his girlfriends, it's funny to see young gay guys out in the wild. 10 years, he'll have a buzzcut, a gym routine and an apartment in the CBD.

We walk a little further up Clayton Road for deserts. We ate those frozen, fruity, snowy, desert pearl Asian deserts. We had one each. The deserts cost more than our main meals, but I'm not complaining.

Sam was very excited about a robot delivering the food to our table. The look on his face was the highlight of the day.

2.30pm. When we’re done with desert, we head off to do the thing we were really in the area to do. I tell you, a couple of hours in the afternoon is all the work we can manage on getting stuff done.

3.05pm. I’m sitting in the Fowles Auctions toilet taking a dump. The toilet stinks, I have to be true. I’d really needed to have a second shit all day and I was rapidly wondering if I was going to get to an emergency situation before we made it home. Ha ha, but you know what I mean. Is that too much information? I guess it is. But it was very satisfying.

Sam is looking for carpet for his rental. The existing carpet is a really light colour and while it is okay in some rooms, its really fucked in some of the bedrooms.

3.30pm. Tra La La. Sam is talking to yet another carpet person. I lay down on the rolls of carpet, not sure that is the thing to do. But, I love the smell of new carpet, don't you love the smell of a good carpet roll?

3.36pm. Sam is doing the paperwork for the carpet and the underlay.

I’m so bored. You have to understand that Sam doesn't drive so my main function a lot of the time is chauffeur. Oh, not that I mind, I pretty much only really like hanging out with Sam now a days, but I'm not even good at shopping when I am doing it for myself.

3.43pm. We’re leaving.

It was an easy run home. The sun shone, the sky was blue.

4.20pm. We’re home.

Now the temperature has dropped and it's a lovely evening. It's going to be hot tomorrow, 38, the bulldogs will have to get their walk in early. I don't know about you, but I have been enjoying the not so hot summer. It's still been warm enough for shorts and t-shirts every day, so I've liked it.

Strawberries For The Dogs

Sam had forgotten to get the tinned peaches, or the bananas, for my porridge. There are a few over ripe bananas in the fruit bow, but really, no, looks like I'll be making a banana cake tomorrow. Last week I made apple cake, but I think the Granny Smiths may have been past their peak.

My bakery has been closed all of January and is still closed – they must do alright during the year, I think every time I walk past the closed shop front – so there has been no bread for my breakfast this year.

Sam had remembered the oats themselves and the cinnamon, but not the tin of peaches. (Sam does the shopping he is very clear about that, be under no misunderstanding that I am... I'm not really sure what you call it with two guys. It can't be sexist, now can it?)

Sam is not a breakfast person so he doesn't quite grasp the magnitude of the disappointment. So, yes admittedly, I was starting to have a whine about the lack of fruit for my oats, yes ashamedly, when he said there are strawberries. He never forgets to get strawberries for the dogs, but my peaches, or bananas, are too difficult to remember.

Strawberries for the dogs, yes, apparently, I was allowed to take a few for my breakfast, the dogs gave their approval, nodding sage like at the suggestion.