Monday, December 12, 2011

Houseminding in Glebe II

Tuesday: Day 5 of 12
I wake up feeling not exhausted, at a normal time. I shower, and make a coffee. I have an hour to spare before I need to leave for work. I feel like life is getting back on track. I play scrabble on Facebook. I look at twitter and follow interesting links. I write to Jenny Smith. I write how I *must* cook the enormous rump steak, which I had planned for 2 or 3 meals, and which I bought in Canberra, tonight, or it will be Too Late. Though the sailing club committee meeting I am attending at the Taxi Club tonight might be an impediment. I drive to work, and find someone leaving a spot as I arrive in Arundel Street.

I finish work at 6 and park the car in front of the house. There's been a spot there each time, though sometimes the car in the spot in front, which is next to a giant fig tree, parks 5 foot out from the kerb. There are two items of mail in the front yard, scattered. I feel this is my fault for closing the mail flap this morning on my way out. There are a lot of fallen leaves. I wonder how difficult it would be to sweep the low maintenance pebble parterre clear of them. I go inside, drop the mail on the pile behind the door, go into the lounge room, empty my back pack of my so-far-this-week-unused swimming gear, then head up St John's Road to the fruttivendolo. I have heard good things about this place and I am pleased to say they had not only a great variety of fruit and veg, but unusual varieties of, for example, tomatoes, and potatoes! There were Nicola, which I had never heard of, and Bernadette, which I remembered from my childhood last century. I bought English spinach and onions, giant bananas, and from the Foodworks bread and milk.

I feel like a glass of wine but I have none, so I drink some water. I unlock the back door, for the first time, and the back gate. It takes me a while, in the dark, to work out there is bolt that needs to be drawn. There is a light over the bbq, and I put the onions on to fry with a spot of oil. I get the steak from the fridge. I unseal the plastic and try not to think about what the smell I can smell might mean. I decide to take a risk, and put the steak on the grill. I stand there, stirring the onions, wishing I had a glass of wine to drink, but I don't, so instead I drink large glasses of water, which later in my amusing Twitter quips I call Chaste Bachelors. 

So I use the bbq, and I think I will clean it later as I pull the lid down, and I certainly mean to clean it, it would be terrible not to. And I go inside and spoon on the spinach I had steamed, next to the giant piece of grilled rump steak piled high with brown fried onions, and I get the salt and pepper cellars, neither of which grind really well, and I eat my dinner at the dining table, which is otherwise covered with clutter from my back-pack - busy-bag clutter, not swimming gear clutter - and read my book.

Then I do the dishes. And after I stay up late - to midnight - on the internet. Facebook and twitter and gmail. The History function on the Firefox browser is turned off - nothing is recorded - so every time I want a web-page I must type the whole of the address, or find out the address from a Google search! I consider turning the History function on, and I recall all those websites I've looked at but haven't mentioned here, and I decide not to turn the History on.

I go up to bed. It's cold - damn you la NiƱa! - and I need blankets. I go down to my dressing room and look in the cupboards, but they are full of Christmas decorations and copies of Deb's books and camping gear. I gingerly open some of the larger drawers a crack in the bijou dressers upstairs, and I glimpse baseball hats (in the male dresser) and pink knitted wool (in the female) but no blankets. I put on my polo-fleece vest as a jarmie top again and snuggle up with Mrs Ames anyway. She is my book. After I turn the light out I lay there an hour, not falling asleep, not getting warm. My pulse is slow. I am no furnace.

I forgot to mention that cute guy across the road!

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