As the Drama Flies…

I usually name my mythical soap operas _All My [NOUN]s_, mad-lib style. But my life is definitely As the Drama Flies. And believe me, it’s flying pretty damn low, right now.

Got some expensive and some not-so-expensive stuff to try and train the hound not to chew shit he shouldn’t chew. Neither of said stuff is waterproof.

Gave selfsame stuff to Hubby and Mostly Shiftless. It hasn’t been seen since.

It rained.

Dog decided to gnaw on the most expensive part of the linkage between Shiftless’ car and the trailer, which took all weekend to fix. Now we’re down $600 and the rent won’t be in for six goddamn weeks just so we can pay for it.

Six weeks of pulling my head in so far, it almost emerges from the other end.

Now, you may also recall from my earlier posts that my legs are not fully functioning. As part of better news, I have to go get a passport. I figure the kids should behave themselves for the five minutes it should take to get this underway.

As I frequently say: Should is not Is.

The queue for the post office was a mile fucking long.

The kids were hyper because their routine was amiss. They got to the point where they were trying to eat each other’s clothes.

Last night, I had finally got in the good, long soak in Epsom’s salts, Relaxo Crystals [not their real name], bubble bath and bath roses. It did my joints SUCH a good job that I was better for most of the day.

Not after the post office.

My knee is back to it’s grinchy self. My wrists are aching. My ankle is threatening to quit.

Expletives deleted. Extensively.

We also had to go shopping, which meant sending Mayhem into Aldi’s with a list and my money. The only thing he got right was the milk and the carrots. And he had to buy himself a treat when I spend practically every conversation with him telling him how little money we’ve got.

So the sugarless gum he bought is going to Hubby - mostly ‘cause I can’t stand artificial sugar. I’m pissed off and in pain. AND I have to roast the damn marinated chook he found “the only kind there”, he claims… because you can’t make chook soup out of marinated fucking chicken.

I only have the cash I’ve got, and then it’s gone.

On the upside, I have an upcoming three weeks of retail therapy in Thailand, come April. Three weeks without whiny, lying kids. Three weeks without worry about hubby. Three weeks in, insofar as I’ve been told, paradise. Three weeks that the in-laws shall have sharing company with Chaos, Mayhem and mutt.

I’m going to love it.

The hazards of dog-walking

Before the weeks of deluge, I alternated blocks to walk the hound around. Let’s call them Clockwise and Anticlockwise.

And a couple of times, I even managed to do both.

That was before we evicted the Carpet From Hell [it wasn’t paying rent], the subsequent stint of bad asthma, and a rainstorm just short of another effing flood.

Now I’m back to one block until I’m absolutely, positively certain that my health is up to a double circuit.

Problem is, the plovers have moved into Clockwise Path.

Plovers are one of the few ground-nesting species to survive the introduction of the White Man [and his associated pe(s)ts]. They did this through sheer bloody-mindedness and an aggressively belligerent attitude against anything else that moves. Oh, and nasty little spurs on their wings that can split your skin wide open.

They’re also one of the few native species with sharp bits that are not also venomous. Count your small blessings while you may.

Silly me, I decided to take Clockwise Path to see what’s been going on since the last time the sun deigned to shine.

I had to jog the dog past the plovers and pray neither of us got struck. Even though my pink canvas hat is nice and thick, I doubt it’s thick enough to double as a plover-proof helmet.

Good news: we made it. Yay.

Bad news: Clockwise path is now officially closed to me until such time as the plovers move out. This can take some significant time.

We once had a family of plovers nesting in our backyard for a friggin’ year. A year! Sure, they raised successive generations of adorable fluffy chicks [and the babies are adorable, just steer clear of the overprotective parents] but we had a large circle of yard we couldn’t mow.

Medaeval maps have “here there be dragons” on them to denote dangerous or unknown territory. Australia has “here there be plovers”.

If I do get up to a double circuit during nesting season, I shall go twice around Anticlockwise Path. And if the plovers move in there… four times around the inside of our fence.

Never argue with a plover. They always win.

Poor dog

The hound has taken to racing up and down the yard in the rain. I have only just figured out why.

He’s looking for his people.

Unfortunately for the hound, his people - Mayhem and Chaos - are back at school. Until it floods out with all this fargnaxing rain.

So in order to keep him at least dry, I’ve had to keep the front door open so he knows I’m around. Poor thing’s huddled up by the door and occasionally looking in with soulful eyes.

He stinks and he’s wet, so he stinks worse. Plus, he tends to chew everything he can get his teeth into, so there’s no way on this green [and waterlogged] earth that I’m going to let him indoors.

Best I can do for him is sit on the veranda when the wind is driving the rain away from it and give him company and pats.

Poor mutt.

Rain, rain, go away. We’d all love to do some stuff today.

Progress and AntiProgress

Sir Terry Pratchett argued convincingly that everything must have it’s opposite. Not just the light-dark opposite, but the opposite that goes through the conventional, traditional opposite and out the other side.

We have progress. What I’m having is a kind of anti-progress that has gone through retention and out the other side.

I am getting fit enough to take the dog around two blocks -yay- BUT, on the anti-progress side, I’ve been struck from asthma as a direct result of Mayhem’s Carpet From Hell [coming to a cinema near you!] and literally can’t walk more than a block without wheezing and coming over all blue.

Progress: we got all the filth out of Mayhem’s room. Something of a Herculean task, I can tell you. The Augean Stables were easier.
Antiprogress: Since the Carpet From Hell™ needed to be got rid of, Hubby and Brother-in-Law [aka Normally Shiftless] thought this was a brilliant excuse to renovate. Now I have furniture blocking further progress in getting the house clean and thanks to Mayhem’s hazmat situation I now have two cubic metres of laundry to tackle.

Progress: I’m getting more than five steps in a row before having to stop and re-introduce the hound to the concept of “heel”.
Antiprogress: He gets the idea that when I stop, he should be next to/behind me, but hasn’t connected the command with the action. Thus my entire walk is me saying “heel” practically nonstop for fifteen or so minutes. The word is losing all meaning.

Progress: Chaos is starting to help with small household cleaning tasks.
Antiprogress: it mostly consists of grabbing the nearest sponge or towel and wiping five square centimetres of countertop. Adorable, but useless.

Progress: I think I’m getting the household to start picking up after themselves
Antiprogress: There’s still vast swathes of “That’s not mine” when I’m after whoever left a mess. One day, I shall get them to clean the mess they see.

Of course, one day, the sun will grow cold and die… but I hope I can achieve that goal before then.

It’s a constant, uphill slog. I’m tired of it.

I can hold out the hope that I’ll get there, and achieve a lovely house and keep it that way… But I was nearly there… and now my house is once more crammed with stuff I have to get out of the way.

Some times, it makes me want to cry.

Crying never got anything done. Guess I have to get up and just do it.

Because no-one else will.

Ow.

I’m going to have to work on leash-training the hound at home. Lord knows I lack the capability when out on our morning constitutional.

I left the check chain at home this morning. It wasn’t working to stop him tugging, and it was just hurting him.

Just the ordinary leash on his harness hurt my wrist from the near-constant pulling, but then I don’t matter.

I’m just a human.

Still, walking every day will help me lose weight and help the dog by getting him out and about. And if I can get him to come to heel and walk with me, then we can both enjoy the experience.

When I’m no longer puffing and blowing after a walk around one block, I may go for two blocks. Set off all the dogs around the neighbourhood in one go.

But right now, my wrist hurts. My legs hurt. My back hurts. And it’s a bit of a pain to get a whole lung full of air. I clearly need to keep going until I get better or it kills me.

And I only got a paragraph and a half done on my novel.

Ah well. Progress is progress, I guess.

Clever Dog, Not Smart Dog.

The hound, by daylight known as Max, loves rounding up our neighbour’s cows. I’m pretty certain that the neighbours feel less than charitable about that.

Another neighbour dislikes Max barking at the cows, the birds, etc. while he’s on his leash and has complained. Twice. I’m sure he has a few names for the dog that aren’t printable.

So in order to keep both neighbours happy, we have been attempting to fix the fence to so the dog can’t get through. Our first test resulted in us having to go fetch him away from the cows.

I insisted on having him on a leash for subsequent tests. Dog found all the places he could slip through. Easily inside of ten minutes.

When it comes to finding possible holes in fences, that dog is a frikkin genius.

When it comes to obeying orders… not so much.

It is not smart for a dog to be seen annoying cattle. That sort of dog can get shot.

On the bright side, we should have the fence permanently fixed, soon. And, I hope, fixed enough that he won’t be a pest to anyone.

I hope.

I pray.

He’s a loveable dog, but damn, he’s clever in all the wrong ways.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Someone, somewhere, theorised that we spend half our lives waiting for something to happen.

Be that in a queue or in waiting rooms, or sitting around and waiting for someone in power to get the thumb out of their divot and get things done.

I, currently, have wasted half my day waiting for the men of the house to get their hairy arses into gear so we can finally finish fixing that fucking fence. They apparently spent all night programming - at work and at home - so  that they could have time to get things done today.

And the neighbour angry at our dog for barking came by again whilst I was sleeping and Hubby didn’t drop one golden word about the measures we’d taken already. Sigh.

I asked a few days ago as to whether or not I would be able to do the fence on my only. Hubby said one word, “no.” He wouldn’t even let me try.

So I have wasted half the week waiting for him to come home in daylight hours [he didn’t] so we could work on the fence. Now I’m feeling my weekend bleeding away because I’m waiting for him to wake up.

AND it’s my Mum’s birthday today [Nov 27th] and I can’t go shopping for her present because nobody’s awake to look after the kids.

Normally, I don’t mind waiting. It’s when I get some of my best writing done. But it’s hard to write when you’re sick with worry and stressing out about the things that need to get done but can’t because other people are fast asleep like the innocent.

It isn’t fair.

I spent every last cent I had on this. I work just as hard and just as long on it, and I’d do more if I just knew where Hubby put the damn essential tools… and nothing gets done today because the men decided they’d rather program all night and sleep all day.

The more time gets wasted, the angrier the neighbour gets and the sicker I feel from stressing out about the whole issue.

So whoever came up with that statistic must have me as a dot outside the curve, because most of my waking time is wasted waiting for other people to shift the thumb.

Is it so wrong just to want to get things DONE?

A Quarter to 2AM

Monday 28th of November.

That’s when I sat down to write this. Give or take a few minutes.

Someone rang our phone and hung up. Twice. Long about midnight.

As a means of waking me up, it’s very effective.

Once I’m awake, no matter what, I can’t get back to sleep.

It doesn’t matter how tired I am. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It doesn’t matter that there’s absolutely nothing keeping me from rolling over and going back to sleep. I just can’t find that restful place of slumber.

I’m awake for the day. And there’s still about three hours to go before I’m supposed to wake up. That’s three more hours in what is going to be a long day.

Today’s the day I’m going to arrange to get the dog neutered. This is supposed to settle him down a bit more. After that, I now plan on ringing the person who rang us back and ask politely what they were doing at about midnight.

I know it wasn’t our contentious neighbour. Max has hardly uttered a sound since the fence was fixed and we finally let him off the leash.

I know because I got up and checked on the dog after I gave up trying to find slumberland once more. He has kibble that he won’t eat and water. I suspect he’s not eating the kibble because his food bowl is a bit dirty. One more thing to do once the sun begins to peek over the horizon.

I worry about what to do about the neighbour. I can understand sleep depravation only too well. I’ve lived it for a few months, now.

St John’s Wort pills help me fight off anxiety and get to sleep, and the recommended dose is one tablet with meals. That means one pill in the night. No more. Having a source of white noise [air conditioning] helped me sleep through other neighbourhood dogs’ barking.

But it’s quiet, now.

Another neighbour, across the road and down the street a bit, has their lights on. I worry about them, too, even though I barely know them. BF in the morning is no time to be awake.

But they are awake. Or at least, they have some lights on.

And I’m awake.

At least I’m prepared to bop Max on the nose, should he bark with every other dog in the neighbourhood, come the dawn.

I shall add mocha and caramel sticks to my shopping list, and consume vast quantities of caramel mochachino [three months without! New record!] and tough it out until bedtime. It won’t even be the longest time I’ve been awake. My record on that is 36 hours. A day and a half. And I did that one without caramel mochachinos.

But my plans, like me, shall have to wait.

It’s 2AM.

The rest of the world is asleep.

And I wish upon our neighbours some wonderful, peaceful dreams. The kind that help them become better people.

Nostalgia For Never Was

Remember all those sitcoms where people helped people out? The dream worlds like The Waltons or Leave It To Beaver? If a Neighbour was experiencing trouble, the whole neighbourhood pitched in to help.

I’m more convinced than every that it was just a dream. An impossible utopia that everyone pretends was real so they can say, “things were better when…”

In the real world, some busybody Neighbour would have reported the Cleavers to CPS because their kid was out of control.

Yeah, I’m still a bit bitter about the fence thing.

I watch some shows for fun. I watch one to escape my worries. That one, I wish was even a little bit real.

That show is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

It’s the same kind of dream world, where mean people - narrow minded people - are rare, if not nonexistent. A place where anyone can find employment based on skill and aptitude, rather than academic qualifications. A place where any personal quirk is accepted and tolerated.

If everyone on the planet actually worked towards some kind of mutual acceptance, mutual help, etc. then the world might just be a nicer place in which to live.

I guess that’s why they had to destroy the OWS camp. OWS were showing the world that they didn’t need the infrastructure we’ve been told we depend upon. They were living outside of The Holy System. Thumbing their noses at Authority and not backing down, giving up, shutting up, or going away.

If we lived our lives like the never-was Cleavers, Waltons(disregard the anti feminist stereotypes, please), or even ponies, there wouldn’t be a need for OWS in the first place, because people who got too greedy would be condemned instead of praised.

I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m saying it’s something to strive for. Act better towards each other. Act with compassion, empathy and tolerance. Think a little about what other people might want before you take for yourself.

OWS made a functioning city within a city. We can make a functioning society out of the tattered remains that selfishness and mean minds have left us. It all comes down to three words:

“Need some help?”

Practice using them for a better tomorrow.

Due to Circumstances Beyond My Control…

I had to spend my “me money” on groceries.

You might not think this is such a big freakin’ deal. You’re entitled to your opinions. Hell, you’re entitled to tl;dr everything I write. Just like I’m entitled to write what I want, when I want.

And, right now, I want to vent some spleen.

I don’t spend a lot on myself for several reasons: 1) I’m hella fussy. Anyone who’s read my blog entries on finding the right shoes would know that. 2) Everything - and I mean every last thing - I want or desire is not available in my area, not for sale, non-existent, or freakishly, fist-bitingly expensive. 3) Most of the time I feel like I don’t deserve the luxury of spending money on just me.

Seriously, the most money I usually spend on myself is about $20 on chocolate. That lasts me the better part of a month. A month and a half - or more - if I actually stick to my rationing regime.

Everything else goes to the household. Kids, mostly. Little bits and bobs to keep the spawn happy and the odd I-hope-you-like-it thing I find for Hubby.

So, if I want something big, I save for it. I scratch together loose change from cleaning, from pockets in the laundry, from shopping overflow and -yes- even from the footpaths. I collect it all in an old simmer sauce jar. When it’s full, I go cash it in and spend however much I’ve saved solely on myself.

It takes me a year to fill that jar with change.

A year’s worth of slow effort is worth a little self-indulgence, don’t you think?

Not this year.

This year, some neighbour decided they didn’t have enough to do and complained about our dog’s relative freedom. As a direct result, we have no money for food.

Let me unpack. The hound was a surprise gift from a relative. We had no time to prepare for his arrival and have been desperately scrambling between stopgaps ever since he arrived. Alongside the usual stuff like buying his food and necessities…

The dog is a border-collie cross. He loves rounding up animals but hasn’t any idea what to do with them after that. On the times he spends holidaying with the kids at Grandma’s little farm, he rounds the sheep up all day long.

The neighbours uphill from us have two cows. Our fence is one the dog can very easily slip through.

I’m certain you can connect the dots. If we let the dog roam loose in our yard, he’s soon in their yard and pestering the cows.

So we’ve had to tie him up.

I got a five meter length of chain [those plastic-coated wire long leashes are a sack of suck] and one of those can’t-tangle-it tether-posts and did my best. He has access to food, water, shelter and shade. And I have to make sure he doesn’t tangle himself anyway because he’s that kind of dog.

RSPCA rolls round because of the aforementioned complaint, and proceeds to tell me the hound needs exercise.

I say we have plans to fix the back fence this weekend past. It’s been four weeks in the planning already, and a belligerently unbelievable chain of errors has stood between us and fixing that effing fence.

RSPCA plans to be back sometime this week.

I go off my nut panicking about the fence, and volunteer my savings to pay for the materials.

As I write this, the fence is halfway done [we ran out of light, strength, agility and motivation] with the hope of getting it fixed all the way real soon now.

I have $14 in my bank account.

My regular budget for food and necessities is $200.

I had $84 in change in my jar.

I had $35 squirrelled away over the passage of six months.

I need to keep $50 for petrol.

So yeah, thanks a real bunch, concerned neighbour. If you’d just come over and talked to me, I’d have told you we were trying to deal with things at our own speed. Which, I admit, is rather glacial. We could have worked something out.

But, because you apparently would love to see us get into legal trouble for something, you had to go blather to the authorities. And now we’re completely broke, with no safety net, and barely enough money to get by until whenever Hubby’s indie business actually makes some.

Thanks a lot.

As if I didn’t have enough concerns on my plate, bleeding my soul dry, now I have to worry about whether or not we get to eat, next week.

Fuck you. Fuck you very much.