Pessimism is a last resort

Very busy dreams last night.  Melinda (she's a fitness instructor) is baking pies. I'm not allowed to touch them. Eunice is at Coles, she walks past me, I'm near a register waiting to be served. I must also find time to enter the Moran Art Prize. The dream shows me ten artworks so beautiful, a whole body of work - pointillist, silvery, esoteric - great stuff. Tiny windows of magic light flashed at me for a second. I suppose my imagination was exhibiting what I am capable of. I drink them down fast like shots.

I wake up to fart and think on this coldest morning of the year. 'Six degrees' reported from MSP who delivers the morning cup of 'hot, steaming Joe', which it is not by the time I pull-up on one elbow. My fingers peep out from under the doona, feeling bitten, looking for pen and paper. My arse does an excellent impression of a trombone. I consider risking frostbite up to the elbow to reach the coffee before it is beyond repair.

This was to be the weekend I meant to rent a six hundred dollar snow chalet overlooking Lake Eucumbeen. Poverty, once again, has forced me to live behind my hopes. Our next fabulous weekend planned in the country of my day-dreams is Dubbo Western Plains Zoo. I shall wake up in August and think 'I dreamt of lion's roaring last night - in Gladesville'. 

It hurts. I like to concentrate on pain in the morning. By afternoon I've worked my way up to mild discontent. If I plan an outing I can enjoy slight boredom. In the evenings I turn to drink. I've decided that making money might get me truly wondrous. That way I can use it to gawp at expensive magazines, spread my legs at top-class beauty salons and ideally visit African animal resorts and centrally-heated winter cabins. I would alleviate my ennui with trips to IKEA and post large packages of gifts to my nieces instead of the piddling efforts I'm currently guilty of.

For this week's menu, in order to buy myself a book or a bra, I'll plan meals that rely heavily on noodles and vegetables. That old temptation to toilet train Chuckles returns every time I enter isle three for nappies. By the time I pay for my trolleyload I'll experience the equivalent of a tiny thrill, smug in the knowledge I can feed the family for another week, or is it just seeing a three figure number on a cash register. In my Coles dream I spot Eunice shopping, I bet she never has to count carefully for groceries. In real life I did phone her for a loan so I could rent the snow chalet. She never acknowledged the request, she did however tell me of her own plans to take her children skiing. I pray to be a considerate friend, so blog bitching about them isn't very good as they are my only readers. Names have been changed.

There is a particular time of morning, when I am due to get up, the sun enters the window, piercing my dim, sleepy world. I am not a morning person because I wake up angry, covered in sleep-mud. Writing helps me beat off depressing, rabid-dog thoughts. I have to mentally kick the little fuckers off me. Sometimes that small, happy square of sunlight drifts over me and picks me up from under my armpits and props me up on the pillows and says 'here, drink this'.

The clouds mask the sun with a grey filter, everything is not so sunny, there is no pick me up. My pen is grumpy, the coffee has gone cold. But today I remember the science, that if I lay here as usual, I know that somewhere the sun is swimming in its blue sky as usual, just behind the clouds, right there where it always is, only obscured by a passing earth mood. It will come back. I cheer myself with thoughts like 'when I am dead I will get to sleep in a bit longer'. My Auntie Christine (pictured in the 60's) died in her mid-thirties of a brain tumour, cleaning the kitchen cupboards.

Exterminator for Hire

So after five years of an aversion to reading the newspaper, I can actually absorb a whole page on Saturdays, usually the previous week's edition of the SMH, and not just the movie reviews either.  Today I read all about PM Rudd's totally groovy speech to Peking University.  Obviously my Getup contribution drove him to the edge.

I felt a bit confused when fellow Buddhists were apparently going ape in Lhasa, understandably so, I know how  being pent up for years on end can make you want to leap the barrier, although according to my Facebook confidant, there is talk of them actually being Chinese soldiers (seen above holding robes).  Today I popped over to Bondi in record time, using some of those lucky punk karma lane changes that you can do off peak. On the way there I see a Sydney cab driver do something original - talk about politics.

Free for the arvo, I get to my pregnant friend's birthday party - afternoon tea, innocent enough, and there are twelve adults and twenty under 5's.  I left my children at home because I could.  There was a riot going on.  That'll teach her for having baby number two.  I experienced a zen-like calm owing to the fact I was the only parent with a pass-out, and as a random act of compassion I offered the birthday girl and her one and a half children a lift in the Kombi.

Little did I realise that at the exact latitude and longitude of my VW was an extremely functional 70's three tier bookshelf (our books are currently stacked on the floor) and a very cute toddler bed (a perfect upgrade from a cot) of the roadside chuckout variety.  It was a case of pregnant birthday friend with child(ren) in the rain V's free furniture.

Guess I've matured.  I gave up the furniture and got a nice packet of assorted creams for my sacrifice from birthday girl.  Mental note to self:  there are better roadside dumps in Bondi than any other part of Sydney.  My theory being a/more backpackers coming and going (especially this time of year - yay for the locals) and b/more aspiring Good Weekend readers who have turfed out those unpretentious hardy veneer shelves on coasters for a nice bit of Chinese-made IKEA Billy.