One Angry Monkey

I’ve spent hours recently staring at a wretchedly blank screen. I’ve passed 100,000 words on my monsterpiece and now that I’m on the home stretch I have a cramp in my leg. Yeah, I know, baseball analogies only work if you like baseball. But whatever, it’s my blog. (more…)

People today. They’re obsessed with “the secret”. Wow! You look ten years younger! What’s the secret?

For the record, I don’t look ten years younger. If I looked ten years younger I’d look eighteen. I don’t.

No, my secret revolves around weight loss. When I was having my crohn’s flare I lost something in the region of thirty kilograms. I don’t know how much that is in pounds. Google it if you care. (The real achievement? I kept all but twenty-five of it off! Yay me!) As I lost the weight all of my friends kept asking me, “What’s your secret?” I told them. I have a chronic illness. I can’t keep much food down. What food I can keep down just fires out the other end a couple of hours later, undigested. In essence my body has issued me with an eating disorder I don’t need to maintain myself. My stomach does that for me.

Wrong answer. (more…)

I’d never realised how socially awkward I am until today. I mean, I knew I was socially awkward but the full extent of it escaped me. I got a phone call from the Matriarch to inform me of the sad passing of Young Boobs’ beloved puppy. She suggested I should email Young Boobs to pass on my sympathies. When the Matriarch says “jump” you’d better not waste time asking “how high?” so as soon as I got off the phone I cranked up the old email (that fat hamster got a workout and all, my email doesn’t see much use).

I stared at the screen. “Hey sis,” I typed. No, too casual. “Hi.” Too terse. “Greetings?” I’m not a f$#king Vulcan. (more…)

Normally I have a little voice in my head. That little voice performs a valuable task on a daily basis. It inspects every thought and idea that passes through my mind, checking each for sanity. Ironic, really, since it’s a voice in my head. Last night it was distracted, perhaps by the return of Grey’s Anatomy. Perhaps it was just a little tired. After all there’s a great deal needing a sanity check inside my mind. Whatever was going on in there, it was lax. I’d fire it, but I really need that pedantic little bastard.

There I was, sitting on the sofa, wondering what the Chief would think of Izzy using all of those hospital supplies to save a bloody deer for Christ’s sake, I mean honestly surely she could have found something with only two legs, when an idea occurred to me. I passed it on to the veto department who, to my surprise, passed it right back with a “Great!” stamp decorating it. What was this idea?

I could wash our underlay tomorrow! I can do it in the bath tub! It’s going to be warm and sunny for the next few days! Even if it doesn’t dry tomorrow, it will by Tuesday! (more…)

I’m the first to admit I have a hoarding problem. I’ve gotten better. Circulars are now thrown out as they arrive, instead of being kept in case I need to clean the oven and don’t have any newspaper. Every little bit counts, right?

During my hospital stay last year the Matriarch came over to help out and take care of me. Part of the duties she took upon herself (with absolutely no guidance from me, of course) was clearing out some of the junk I’d managed to accumulate. One of the first things she inquired about was the rather large collection of coffee jars I had in my pantry. “No, keep those,” I said. “I’ll need them if I decide to make jam one day.” (more…)