The Week Dragon

I don’t know about everybody else but the conveyor belt of life has become something of a relentless monster of late. A dragon that rears its ugly head every Monday morning and roars its unending demands at me in tones that demand my immediate obeisance.

House chores, work chores, personal chores... all spewed forth in a stinging fountain of flame and brimstone and interlaced with little charcoal briquettes of “washing up”, “hoovering the house”, “fixing that shelf” and “cleaning the bathroom”... all those little jobs that get continuously put off because the big ones are taking up so much time and energy... so much so that the little ones eventually require an entire day in themselves to be faced up to because they have stacked up into a pyre that would vaporize Joan of Arc’s asbestos knickers in a single second.

Surely life isn’t meant to be like this? We human beings shouldn’t be waking up every morning heart and body heavy with a hundred foot long list of things that must be done before one can rest one’s weary head again the coming night?

Where is the sun lounger beside the unnaturally blue swimming pool? Where is the perfect sun – neither too hot nor too cold – that cooks me pleasantly without turning my body into a dripping Beef Wellington of sweat? Where is the pina colada, newly frosted in my hand and dripping with fresh pineapple slices?

This isn’t the life I envisioned for myself back when I was a kid. Not that life now is in anyway bad... there’s just too much of it trying to be lived in too short a space of time. Or too little of it trying to encompass too many things. I’m really not sure which.

I know Karen feels the same. By the end of each day we’re both shattered. Exhausted. It’s hard to find the time or energy to do enjoyable things let alone the leftover chores that seem to append themselves to the end of each day.

Back when I was a kid I imagined adult life to be a brilliant smorgasboard of constant spontaneity and adventure. Why shouldn’t you just do anything? I mean who is there to stop you and tell you that you can’t do it? Another adult? Pah! They’ve no right to be in charge of you when you’re an adult yourself!

And in a way that was all perfectly correct and fundamentally astute. But my childish self didn’t take into account the one adult who will always tell you not only that you can’t do that but also tell you why you can’t do that.

Yourself.

The poor you that through habit and conditioning loses its innate ability to cut itself free of the twin chains of “must” and “have to” and soar up unfettered into the boundless blue sky of possibility and freedom... and instead becomes a rather stern and ineffably anal task master who won’t let you off the hook even when your brain is rattling around inside your skull like a walnut with terminal fatigue.

Poo. Sometimes growing up really sucks.

So is it the livelong week that I’m fighting? Or lance in hand, horse rearing up on its hindlegs like Champion The Wonder Horse, am I going to remove the dragon’s battle-mask only to find, like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, that it is only myself that I have been duelling?

Already I can hear the roar of the Monday beast approaching... I need the asnwers fast, folks. I’m getting battle weary.

The Shit Sandwich

The shit sandwich is a day where nothing goes right.

Actually that isn’t enough for a shit sandwich. It’s a day when everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And all the things that can go wrong delight in their wrongness at exactly the same time.

You get a deluge of wrongness.

If you’re feeling ill and have slept badly the night before that’s even better because then the shit sandwich becomes a club shit sandwich.

Extra big filling. With mayo. Ooh great. Just for me? How kind.

The club shit sandwich also has vicious peppercorns in it that lodge painfully between your teeth and gums like explosive grit. You carry the taste around with you all day. So much so that everything else you experience on that day also begins to taste like shit. It’s like the shit sandwich is spreading or... even worse... breeding.

And shit sandwich begat shit sandwich and its name was 12th January 2009...

The last thing you want to be doing when chowing down on a shit sandwich is gnashing your teeth but alas the Biblical allusions demand that this is done. So you gnash. And gnash. And it’s shit.

And it’s all yours.

Because people will share your lunch, your politics, your office stapler, your darkest secrets but nobody – nobody at all – will willingly share a shit sandwich with you. If you’re packing a shit sandwich you’re eating alone. It’s got your name all over it. Just your name. Just you.

Yes sirree. Sure looks good but if you don’t mind I’ll just stick with this here ham and lettuce... mm mm!

And you can’t blame them. You can’t blame them at all. Everybody gets a shit sandwich every now and then. It’s the way of the world. When it’s your turn to get a shit sandwich it isn’t a cup that can be passed on to someone else.

It’s bequeathed to you by life itself. You’ve just got to grit your teeth and make your way through it. Neck it down right to the last few flaky crumbs of the crust and hope that tomorrow it finds itself in someone else’s lunch box.

Because a shit sandwich isn’t like lightning. There’s no law that says it can’t strike in the same place twice...

There is after all such a thing as a double-decker shit sandwich...

*Sigh*

Pray for me, people. Pray for me.

I’m really not sure I have the stomach for it.

A Bigger Grindstone

Define poverty.

Living on the streets?

Starving, having to steal food to survive?

Dying, having to sell your body to live?

Or just not earning enough money to be able to live decently?

Karen and I don’t particularly lead a profligate lifestyle. We’re not out partying every night (in fact although we went out for a meal Wednesday night to celebrate out wedding anniversary it was the first time we’d been out together in over 5 months). We don’t hit the shops every weekend in wild shopping splurges.

And yet, doing some sums and some short range financial forecasts we discovered that we’re pretty close to being in the crap. Karen needs to return to work in September as we simply can’t afford to have only one of us working indefinitely. This means paying for child care for Tom. Even if Karen only works school hours to try and relieve the burden of this we still need to find an extra £400 a month to cover the nursery costs.

We just do not have this money.

It’s ridiculous. We can’t afford to work. But can’t afford not to work. What are we supposed to do?

We only have three options.

1) Give up the rat race, claim benefits and hope we don’t lose our house as a consequence. Neither of us fancies this kind of lifestyle. This option is definitely out.

2) Bite the bullet and accept that over the next 4 years or so until Tom starts school we are going to slide inexorably into debt. Well. Not so much slide as bullet-train into debt.

3) Bite a bigger bullet and do all we can do slow that inexorable slide right down to a more manageable level. This means me getting an extra part-time job to bring in extra money to cover some of the child care costs. A morning or evening cleaning job most likely.

Karen isn’t happy about it (and I’m not exactly ecstatic) as she doesn’t want to see me flogging myself along the rocky road to a heart attack. But the alternative is a sizable debt that could totally destabilize us and take us decades to pay off. With the economy so shaky at the moment it seems to me some extra money coming into the house would not be a bad thing at all.

So. I am now officially looking for work. Even though I already have plenty. Full-time job. Part-time web design business. Novel on the go. One more year at University. Maintaining a wonderful home life.

Busy busy busy.

Sigh.

So does all this mean that I’m poor? Or just not poor enough?

Who knows? But at least I’m not sewing Nikes in a Kolkata sweat shop... or selling my body in an Essex lay-by.

Backlog And Block

Words, words everywhere and not a word to write.

Or something like that.

I can't even come up with anything remotely clever or "literary" today.

It's been a frustrating week. I haven't been able to do as much writing as I would have liked. The blog has suffered. My novel has suffered. I feel stretched in far too many different directions. I suspect the main reason is I have an essay to write for University and it's hanging over me like the sword of Damocles. In itself it's not too onerous a task to accomplish. 4000 words is pretty meagre by my wordy standards. A couple of days and it'll be done.

However, we've got to come up with our own essay titles.

Sounds a wonderful opportunity doesn't it?

But I'll be blowed if I can come up with a title that doesn't sound limp, lame or just plain lobotomized. I know what I want to write about but I just can't bring it all together into a neat, academically satisfying little package.

Not a global disaster by any means but I'm one of those sadsacks who cannot relax until a set task is completed. I hate having something hanging over me. Absolutely loathe it. Karen on the other hand is happy to leave things to the very last minute. How do people do this? I almost envy her the ability.

Anyway. I feel like I just can't relax and write anything properly or with any kind of enjoyment until the essay is completed... and I'm stumbling at the first hurdle: the title. It doesn't bode well.

As for the picture of Keeley Hawes...

Well. Eye candy. A spoonful of sugar and all that.

Completely unjustified and all the sweeter for it. Enjoy.

All Work And No Play

I’m a victim of my own success (well, ain’t we all, luvie?) –

I’ve got so much web work coming in at the moment on top of my day job that I’m practically working 10 hour days... the consequence being that I’m either tired, grouchy, hyper-actively detached or, as is often the case, all three.

Karen very tactfully pointed out to me last night that it’s got to stop before I run myself into the ground. And she’s right too. I feel like I’ve hardly seen her or Ben over the last three weeks and I can’t recall the last time I didn’t feel like I was carrying a two tonne weight on my shoulders.

I need to get into the habit of better time management – placing R & R time a lot higher up the list than it currently is. After all, look at it this way: why should work get the best I have to offer when it leaves me with nothing for those I love?

I’m turning into a fat, balding workaholic. Accept I’m neither fat nor balding thankfully. And being a workaholic is the last thing I thought I’d ever be. I’m supposed to be a languorous Leo for heaven sake!

It’s time to kick back and have some fun!