One Angry Monkey

So one of the things I do when I’m trying to make myself feel better about the fact that I haven’t written anything for days is clean. I clean things because cleaning things is productive. Cleaning things is a worthwhile endeavour. Even when you live in the dustiest state on the dustiest continent. Cleaning things when you live in a place like Adelaide means that in three months time you won’t be sleeping in hollowed-out depressions in the thick layer of dust on your bed and you won’t be needing to shift the Dusty Ranges from the middle of the living room to off to the side somewhere so it doesn’t block your view of the TV.

The latest chore in my eternal quest to justify my failure to finish my rainforest-destroying work of pure genius? The window frames. We live in quite an old building. It was built in a time before aluminium window frames became standard. The windows are therefore held securely in place by bits of painted wood. There are lots of corners and the paint is coming off in some parts because whoever last painted the place doesn’t understand how painting actually works. I’m not making baseless accusations here. You can see through the single layer on the red “feature wall” (thank you Better Homes and Gardens), and the door frame on that wall got a liberal dose of the same crimson disaster, only there was no undercoat used there and if you’re not careful (or if you’re a habitual picker like I am) you can detach that single layer of red from the gloss paint it was slathered upon.

I’ve cleaned those frames before. Not long after we moved in, in fact, I was looking out the window, as you do, and I noticed the terrible state of the frames. So I got out my cleaning products and got to work. That was something in the region of eight months ago. Now living in the dustiest place on earth means that clean frames last only until the next time you open your window, but I could live with that. Then came the Great Procrastination. So I decided to clean them again. This time I had a secret weapon - my old toothbrush. Armed with that and a big bucket of very warm water I got to work.

I was scrubbing away at my first window (today, I did the bedroom yesterday) and a flash of movement caught my eye. Something was skittering across the window right next to where my head was. I glanced over, disinterested, before returning my attention to what my abused former toothbrush was doing. Every muscle in my body clenched. Reluctantly the ones controlling my eyes released and I looked back at the moving thing.

What I meant to say was something along the lines of “Oh f$#k Brendan there’s a massive spider right next to my head!” What actually came out was, “Aaaaaafuuuuubahaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.” It’s a word. Look it up. It’s there, you just have to kind of squint a little.

The Man of the House, true to form, made it two whole steps towards me before stopping dead in his tracks. “What is it? Are you okay?” All I could do was point at the spot right in the middle of one of the panes of glass where the thing had stopped so it was framed like a frigging picture and kind of ‘rabble’ at him like a severely traumatised gibbon. “Which side is it on?”

I wish I’d stopped to think about my answer. Instead out of my mouth popped the first thing to enter my head. The truth. “The outside,” I wailed.

Word to the unwise, MotH: If you want to be painted in a better light when I tell people about you, don’t laugh almost until you puke at things like that.

You know, I look at the people I’ve met over the past few months, the authors especially, and I find myself asking, did they doubt themselves? I don’t mean the surface doubt that I think everyone experiences at some point, am I doing the right job, am I marrying the right person, does my bum look big in these pants? I mean the kind of deep, serious self-doubt where you ask yourself, what am I thinking?

When I was at school I always did best at maths and science because in those subjects there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. But in English I was about the worst student in my class. Everything was open to interpretation, and my interpretation was always wrong. There was no black or white. Hell, sometimes it didn’t even look like there was dark and light grey. I hated it. I wished I’d decided to keep doing biology even though I hated the idea of dissecting things. And yet now here I am. Trying to become one of the indirect reasons for my high school torment. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes I wonder why I torture myself. It’s not like I enjoy it. I actually have an aversion to pain which borders on excessive. And yet somehow every time I’m presented with the opportunity to do something I know I’ll never allow myself to live down I go ahead and do it. What am I talking about this time? I’m talking about socialising of course.

With the silly season comes silly parties and functions. I know, I just got done gloating about how I get to avoid that with the family back across the ditch. Unfortunately for my prickly sense of dignity they’re not the only people who celebrate Christmas. Go figure. That wasn’t so bad when I attended things like Coles Christmas parties. There I was guaranteed not to make a fool of myself. Why? Well, I don’t drink until I can’t stand up without the aid of the bar and I don’t have a habit of showing off what I learned at pole dancing classes. I don’t actually take pole dancing classes which helps. Try to restrain your disappointment. Here’s the thing, and it’s going to come as a shock so brace yourself, I’m not good with people. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Christmas is looming before us it seems. The shopping centres’ decorations are sprinkled with about a month and a half’s worth of dust. The music being piped through is an assortment of insipid Christmas carols. The major channels are ruining the good, old-fashioned Sunday Night In with saccharine “comedies” such as Surviving Christmas.

It’s maddening. Last weekend they wasted Christmas with the Kranks. It was the first of December! Although it’s not exactly my cup of tea, it would have made for a better Christmas Day than the 60th screening of Miracle on 34th Street. Read the rest of this entry »

At what point does a perfectly normal person become a cynical pessimist? I don’t recall being such a glass-half-empty sort of girl growing up. Mind you, if I felt the tide was running out I’d just go for a top-up but anyway. I could swear I’d once followed the Monty Python philosophy - always look on the bright side of life.

Why, then, have I turned into such a bitter old tart, always expecting the worst? I see Patti and Selma on the Simpsons and think, there but for the grace of the Man of the House go I. What brought this on? Read the rest of this entry »

With the weekend comes my opportunity to get the laundry done. Why the weekend? Well, because we have ants in our backyard. Despite my less-than-impressed reaction to Ants on a Plane! I am not fond of ants. I don’t know many people who are, I’ll admit, but I especially dislike them. They come in vast numbers. And when I kill them with fly spray they die in vast numbers leaving me to clean up their corpses. It makes my skin crawl.

And that’s just New Zealand ants. Australian ants are worse because they’ll bite you. Even just the normal ones. This country is ridiculous. Everything bites. If I went out tomorrow and got bitten by a plant I wouldn’t be surprised. Well, beyond the fact that I was actually out. In an effort to avoid having ants crawling up my pants and biting my ankles (it hurts!) I get Brendan to hang the washing out. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so, I know that I only update this when I have something to complain about (or at least I think I do) but seriously.Very little is more invasive than living in a house which is on the market. Living next to a house which is on the market comes a very close second. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was increasingly-less-recently admitted to hospital courtesy of the crohn’s my mother came over to help me out around the house. Yes, it was a lovely thing to do. Yes, she’s a wonderful mother. She spent three of the four or five weeks she was here sitting by my bed keeping me company while I waited patiently (hah!) for my doctors to swing by and tell me what exciting new thing would be keeping me there for just a couple more days. Eventually, however, I was released and returned to my home only to discover that “home” is no less boring than “hospital” to spend all day every day.

Still unsure of my newfound health (I’d been released at one point only to have to return a week later) I was hesitant to travel to any place where I wasn’t sure about the location of the toilets so to break the monotony we decided that we’d visit Victor Harbour, a delightful little seaside town only about an hour or so south of Adelaide. I’d been there before and therefore had already scouted out the loos. For the record, taking into account the fact that they’re public toilets at a popular tourist spot they’re surprisingly not bad. Not five star but how picky can you really be about something to which you’re doing what you do to toilets? (Check that, I’m fairly sure you’ll find it’s technically accurate. Don’t, however, say it five times fast or use it as an example of grammatical correctness.) Read the rest of this entry »