This is so full of TMI. You may want to look away.

Medical science has come a long way over the centuries, but there is one unsung hero of the medical world which is incredibly important and yet rarely thought of when we mention hospital technology:

The humble Bedpan. (Last chance; look away now if talk of bladders squicks you)

I was in the emergency on Thursday morning (I’m fine and will write more on that at a later date), and for a few hours was not allowed to leave the bed they had put me in. This was fine by me, I didn’t really feel like going anywhere at the time, except that I was busting to go to the toilet.
 
The nurse kindly got me a bedpan and some toilet paper, and told me that I just had to sit on it however I liked and Go! 
... 
 This was not as easy as one might think*. 

Creepy Octopus. Don't snorkle immediately after an ECG.

First, you need to figure out just how full your bladder is, as this can determine the speed of the stream and, thus, the angle (I don’t know exactly how much control men have over their aim, but I have very little over mine). As the bedpan is asymmetrical, you then need to figure out which end to have in front of you (it’s shaped vaguely like a toilet bowl, but it’s not quite right). After that, you find a way of raising yourself onto it without pulling the IV out of your arm or any of the cables off the electrodes that are being used to monitor you (that thing is like a squid - I had a friggin' squid attached to me by sticky patches with press-studs!), thus setting off alarms and alerting the resuscitation team to what the device now thinks is a cardiac arrest and causing all sorts of mayhem, when all you want to do is pee...

Once you’re there, you then get to feel grateful that the doctor and nurse have the good grace to look away because your gown isn’t done up at the back and you had to remove your bra for the electrodes to go on, so you’re not only peeing in public on a bed into a bowl (both of which your mother thought she had trained you out of more than two decades ago), but you’re also flashing the room because you either cover yourself or you keep your gown and said electrodes from falling into your makeshift loo.

The end result is that you are bedraggled, half-naked, and relieving yourself in a way you would never have thought to be remotely civilised. On the other hand, your bladder is no longer screaming at you for letting it get to that state in the first place and not peeing before you left.

Moral of the story is: Always pee before you leave the house! Even if you’re leaving to go to the emergency ward.

*I actually drew a diagram, but thought it might be going a bit too far.

The Battle is being waged.

I don’t cope well with being sick. My whole body gets involved and beaten up rather badly every time a virus comes along and decides that this section of the playground (AKA the “human race”) is now ITS turf, demands my body’s lunch money and tells it to do its homework for it.

My body, being a brave little trooper, valiantly says “NO! This is MY turf and you can’t have my lunch money and you can do your own stupid homework!”, and blows a raspberry at the offending bug before the scene cuts and the next shot is of me, lying on the couch in a sea of tissues and looking like I’d just been hit by a truck. Or three.

This wasn’t such an issue when I was a kid, because I’d stay home from school and suffer along merrily while being taken care of for as long as I was being beaten and bullied by the nasty, microscopic insurgents.

These days, it’s more like guerilla warfare. We circle each other, we hide, we take our shots when we can. Then, wounded, we hide again until the next day when the battle starts afresh. 

I have to pick my moments, and decide carefully what I need to do and when I can do it. When the enemy is sleeping so that I can sneak past it and buy groceries, or when they’re most distracted by the flare I threw at them (Strepsils, in this case) so that I can teach the class without sounding like Lurch from The Addams Family.

Despite an increased ability to get on with things, being a grown-up and being sick is still a hard war to fight. It is made even more difficult by the fact that you can no longer launch a full-on assault of constant rest and hot soup. You are now playing chess with the enemy, anticipating the next move and hoping to out-do them before they out-do you.

You could write novels (or movie scripts) based on this stuff.

"Those" People

You know those people who get freaked out by the slightest mark on their shiny, well-kept, expensive cars?

Well, I’m not one of those. My car has a small dent and a few scratches from the massive hailstorm of 2010 (it was parked under a tree, and the branches protected it from the worst of the onslaught), which don’t really bother me, and didn’t at the time.

But I almost became one of those people at the end of 2009. I had decided, after nearly a year of constant saving and scringing, to buy a new car. Well, new-ish. I’d had my 1992-model for close to 2 years and, despite a few “minor” hiccoughs, she’d served me well; getting me places and stuff. 

Sadly though, this car had no air conditioning. While this isn’t too big a deal for most of the Australian year, it is a massive problem when the temperature starts climbing past around 30℃.

My desire for a new car was increased by an order of magnitude when I had good ol’ Beryl checked for roadworthiness and was told that the mechanism holding the front seat in place was very rusted and could slam me into the dash if I were ever involved in a collision. I’ve always known that Inertia hates me (since the first time I fell over on public transport due to unexpected acceleration), and my car had gone psychotic; it was just waiting for the moment when she would snap and kill me in a fit of fury over the fact that I wasn’t checking her water and oil on a regular basis, like I was supposed to.

So I went hunting. I found a car I liked, bought it, and drove it around proudly. It was less than a year old, and I got it for around 3/4 of the price a new one would go for. I was chuffed.

Then. Oh, then. The Office Christmas Party. I rocked up, all dolled up, in my shiny new car. I’d had it a few weeks. I parked. I went inside. I had a nice time. I went home.

The next day, there were scratches and yellow paint on the passenger-side door. You could even see that whoever had been parked next to me had scraped along, realised they were scraping along, and then doubled back. I was kinda livid. This was my new car, that I’d spent nearly a year saving for, and used up all my savings for, and SOME BASTARD HAD SCRATCHED IT and didn’t even leave a note to apologise, let alone take responsibility and offer to pay for the damage. And this was someone I worked with.

As I wasn’t staying on at this workplace, I didn’t bother looking for the culprit. Instead, I kicked into action. I got a buffer. I got cloth. I buffed the absolute crap out of those scratches until I got them looking a bit more reasonable. I got touch-up paint, and I attempted to touch it up with as much delicacy and care as my unco-ordinated fingers are capable. Fortunately, I stopped trying to just before I completely ruined the whole thing, like I usually would (the paint didn’t seep into the cracks and flatten on the surface of the car to make the kind of nice  fix-up job I was dreaming of).

I also stomped my feet a bit, just because it’s what you do when you’re childish and petulant and someone’s scratched your shiny, new car.

And then I gave up and congratulated myself on choosing the silver model, because the scratches aren’t as visible as they would be on any other colour the car came in, and also reminded myself that he hadn’t dented the door or gone all the way through the paint, so there was little chance of any rusting ever happening.

I let it go, because I don’t want to be one of Those People. In fact, I'm so zen about it, that I lost the detail of the guy who rear-ended me a few weeks ago. Not zen enough to not be searching for them though!

Changes?

I don't feel entirely satisfied with the way my blog looks, so I'm going to be playing with the layout and colours a bit. Please bear with me as I do and try not to be too annoyed at anything I do with the overall look :-)

Enthusiastic kitty is annoying. But CUTE!

I own a 6-month-old cat. He’s grey and fluffy and gorgeous. He was a rescue - I got him when he was 11 weeks old and weighed 600g (any smaller at that age, and the vet would have euthanised him). He had worms, and only didn’t have fleas thanks to the the careful care and nursing of a couple of good friends who looked after him for a week before I was able to take him in. They're also the ones who got him up to 600g in that week.

He now weighs around 2.5kg and is well-adjusted, and he thinks that I’m just the best human ever. This is absolutely lovely, until he decides to tell me so at around 4am.

You see, he purrs. Loudly. And he’ll often decide to purr at me. Right next to my face. Once, he found that there was some space between my face and the pillow, and that it was the perfect-sized gap for his little purring head. This meant that he was not only purring ON my face, he was also resonating through the pillow so there was no escape, particularly when I was trapped by the cuteness of it all!

He also seems to think that I’m filthy, bedraggled and unable to take care of myself as, soon after the purring starts, he’ll also randomly decide that I need some serious grooming. So I’ll not only have DabDabDab of him walking on me while trying to get the best angle and the rrrRRRrrrRRRrrrRRR going on right in my ear, I’ll then also have the ScrapeScrapeScrape, both in sound and feeling on my nose and chin and just about any other part of my face he can reach (I’ve taken to keeping my mouth covered by the blanket so he can’t get to that). 

The funny part is if he tries to groom my hair - the length of it just perplexes him and what he does with his mouth reminds me of Mr Ed the talking horse. Apparently they used peanut butter to make the horse do that. It seems that they don’t like getting it on the roof of their mouths. Humans have a name for that when it happens to them - arachibutyrophobia, It’s like another rule 34, but not of the internet; if you can think of it, there is a phobia of it. Humans are weird.

My darling little Smudge.

Anyway.

“So why does she let him on her bed?” - I hear you ask. Well, for starters, because he’s cute ♥. But he is generally good for most of the night, and these grooming and purring episodes are becoming less and less frequent. He’s being trained to know that, if he does anything while I’m in bed at night, he doesn’t get a reaction.

There is just something so lovely about a little creature, who’s not even of your species, thinking you’re awesome and snuggling up next to you or on top of you and falling fast asleep because it’s so very comfy and content in your presence.

Sound effects

People are noisy beings. They’re always making noise - shifting, clicking, rustling..

I don’t like people noises. This is ensured partly by my lack of filter - if someone near me is making a sound and there isn’t another, much louder sound to drown them out, I can’t block it out.

I do try to be polite and not mention it - I really do. But, like anyone, there is only so much gnashing, chewing, popping, rustling that I can take.

You see, people will gulp and and gnaw and swallow and smack, oblivious to the fact that I am taking it all in, indiscriminately. They don’t know because I don’t usually say anything, and they can’t know because they don’t seem to hear it the way I do.

This makes having dinner with people really awkward for me because I know I can’t say anything, because they’re just eating, but all I hear is a series of crunches and scrapes and taps and swallows and more chewing....

Eating in front of the TV isn’t bad because there’s background noise to help drown it out, but if macadamia nuts are in question then it’s just scraping and scraping and crunching REALLY LOUDLY and then more crunching!

In a silent room with someone who’s ingesting is the absolute pits for me, because their chewing and swallowing are REALLY REALLY LOUD compared to the silence everywhere else, and if they’re playing with their hair or biting their nails or, god forbid, ACTUALLY BREATHING it makes me want to throw something at them.

And if they have a cold or hayfever and, then you have them not only twisting and scraping hairs against one another AND swallowing AND BREATHING AND CHEWING AND SNIFFING AND OH MY GOD WILL SOMEONE HAND ME THE FRIGGIN’ FLAME THROWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KKKKSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

We are experiencing technical difficulties. The normal program will resume on August 23rd.

Quincy's Driving Adventures

I know a lot of role-players. I’ve even tried it myself and it was pretty fun (I pissed off Boudica and saved London from the plague). But I’ve never been particularly into it and I had issues with it at one point because I felt that it used up a lot of boyfriend-at-the-time’s time.

My main hobby has always been music (I promise this slight change in theme will make sense) and, being a string player, I’ve been involved in a few string quartets. A few of these quartets even earned me some money, though sadly not enough to live on.

One of these quartets was hired to play at a wedding which took place in the countryside - about a 4hr drive from the capital where I live. The four of us went in a single car to make things simpler and took an available Volvo, belonging to the family on one of the violinists. Our reasoning was that Volvos are notoriously safe cars (unlike their drivers), and none of us were particularly experienced behind the wheel. We figured that this was the safe option.

So, we crammed ourselves and our instruments (cello in the front seat, cellist driving, smaller strings in the back) and drove. Half an hour from our destination, as we were pulling into a small town, the car started making weird clunky noises. We had no idea what it was doing, and decided that the safest bet was to stop at the next service station.

We got out the manual, and the Men decided to Get Manly and try to decipher what the the instrument panel was trying to tell us with its bright, yellow light. They were clearly Not Manly Enough, as we had no idea. We also didn’t have time to wait for the road-side assist guy to come along, as we had a gig to go to. Taxi!

At the end of the gig, one of the guests was kind enough to drive us back to town. I don’t actually remember how we managed to fit everyone and everything into his car, but we did and we got there. We made a call, waited about an hour and a half, and eventually a guy turned up to look at the car. He took one look and told us we weren’t going anywhere. The guest from the wedding had hung around, and drove us to the shabby local little pub.

We ordered drinks, and Cellist got right into playing pool with the locals while the rest of us tried to figure out what to do. We had just been paid, so staying at the local hotel was possible, but we weren’t so keen on giving up our hard-earned cash. The possibility of sleeping in the car came up. At this point, the publican called me aside for a chat. He told me he didn’t normally take guests, but he had two spare rooms in the back and would gladly put us up for the night and give us free drinks if we played some music for him.

How could we refuse?

So, after dinner, the publican put up the “Live Band” sign, and we started playing some music. This town is small enough that they hadn’t ever had a quartet come through before - people were taking photos of us playing around the billiard table (our stands were in the car, which was locked at the servo by now). This was several years ago, and we are still actually remembered - I went through the town recently and called in on the publican who was so kind to us.

We were rescued by a kind parent of one of our members the next day, and made it home with most of our earnings.

I have a lot of role-playing friends. A lot of them have probably role-played travelling bards at some point.

I’ve actually been one.

ADHD 101

You’re going to be getting a lot of posts which begin with “One of the problems with having ADHD is...”. Unfortunately, it’s something you’ll have to bear with me on, because it is something that has a fairly strong influence of my life. So here goes:


One of the problems with having ADHD is getting easily distracted part-way through a task and forgetting what the heck I was going to do in the first place. Which happened to me with precisely this entry, just a few minutes ago.


Damn.

Survivor: Secondary School-Style

Field trips are fascinating things. Not just because of all the cool stuff you get to learn, but also because there is always an adventure when it comes to the students themselves. I remember an excursion to a set of botanical gardens in the city where I live, with a group of year 11 students while I was still a student teacher. It was perilous.

When we weren’t trekking along dirt paths with no sign of fresh water in sight and only our own supplies to rely on for the extent of the journey, we were trying to avoid being eaten by the BIGGEST mosquitos I’d ever seen (“Big as your arm and twice as hungry!” - as a friend of mine put it after I texted him about the situation), or rescuing Damsels from the evils of the Dreaded Bandicoot , as they scurried almost invisibly through the bushes, showing themselves only to steal chips which were carelessly dropped onto the ground.

If the students are not prone to injury and death from the local wildlife, they still have each other to be afraid of. There is only so long that an adolescent can be out in the Wild before their survival instincts kick in, and it is “Every (Wo)man for Him(her)self!”

On a trip to a historical tourist site, this came in to play during the final leg of the trip, just after the most dangerous and chaotic pass through the terrain: The Gift Shop. A female was mistaken for a giant insect (possibly the mosquitos found at the other site) and had an insect trap (involving something akin to superglue) thrown at her. I never found out whether her hair had to be amputated at the site of impact.

This instinct can also still come to the fore when the end of the journey is well and truly in sight and the students are on their way back to their campus of origin, and improvised weapons made from things like plastic bottles are occasionally fashioned. The injuries caused are minor, but the bus drivers still don’t appreciate blood on their upholstery.

Despite the best intentions of the teachers at school and no matter how structured an activity may be, one cannot compete with these basic instincts that humans have for survival. It is inevitable and should be embraced. Teachers should only attend these things when armed to the teeth.

Feet are evil.

There are few body parts which are worse to have cold than your feet. Nose is ok, you can wrap your hands around it and catch the warm breath. Hands are fine, as you can breathe on them, rub them together, put them under your arms, between your thighs, in your pockets... Very versatile when it comes to warming.

But not so with feet. I think feet got angry about being not-quite-hands. They are all useful on other great apes and are climbed with and gripped with and you can do all sorts of things with them. But the first time human feet appeared, I think they knew they’d been gypped. Suddenly, walking was the only thing they were good for. And they knew it.

So, they sought revenge. They thought long and hard about the best way to get back at humans for changing them into these single-purpose, next-to-useless, kind of ugly appendages.

They got COLD. They knew that we’d be more or less helpless against it - you can get around with your hands being warmed by another body part, but not so with feet. They knew that society would frown upon us taking weird poses to try to get some life back into those toes; they knew we wouldn’t be able to do a thing for most of the day.

Feet are evil, vindictive, nasty things and should be replaced with something nicer.

This post was brought to you by the fact that I’m stuck in a freezing cold office with NO HEATING and my FEET are FROZEN.

Quincy: Saving the World, One Trolley at a Time

Yesterday morning was absolutely gorgeous - sunny, not too warm, the kind of day when you’d feel guilty and ashamed of staying indoors, because the sun is bright and the air is fresh and you should be outside playing in the sunshine!

So, my fiancé and I decided to go out and enjoy it. On the way out of the house, we saw something horribly sad: A couple of shopping trolleys on the nature strip. Just sitting there. Lost. Without a hope in the world.  :-( 

You can see the other trolley, trying to look
inconspicuous just around the corner...

I was determined to save them. The fiancé thought I was joking, but I really wasn’t. I couldn’t have them there on my nature strip, looking forlorn and not fulfilling their life’s purpose (Fiancé pointed out that they aren’t alive, but I reminded him that they still have purpose, so they needed to be rescued or they’d be sad).

We agreed to pick them up on the way back from our walk around the neighbourhood. On the way back, we found a third trolley, and I insisted that we take it along with us. So it got pushed along, back to my place, where we picked up the other two.

Filled with my own purpose, I helped get them together, the way trolleys who aren’t moving shopping about should be. They looked happy :-) And we trundled along to the local shops to return them.

On the way, we picked up a fourth! It was like there was a massive trolley party on Saturday night, where they all got completely smashed and fell asleep on the footpath while waiting for someone to call a taxi for them. Even though they were only a 10-minute walk away from home.

I was finally able to figure out why I couldn’t get one of those shallow ones (they’re kind of like the step between a full-on trolley and a basket; you know how baskets can be too small for what you want, and you’ve got stuff spilling over the edges and it’s really really heavy, but when you transfer it to a trolley it looks like you’ve got hardly anything and the other shoppers give you dirty looks, because they needed that trolley and are now carrying 5 baskets while you’re using one for your pitiful, tiny hoard? Well, these are not nearly as deep as a normal shopping trolley but are bigger than a basket and don’t have to be lifted, which makes them awesome, and I can never get one at the local supermarket even though I see other people with them): It’s because they were all hanging round the streets of my neighbourhood! Loitering. Sitting.

Happy Trolleys :-)

So, more trundling, this time with an added degree of difficulty. The guys who collect trolleys in supermarket car parks have all my respect - those things are heavy, and hard to steer. Even with two people working on them, and those guys work alone on each line of trolleys and have at least a dozen of them going at a time!

But we got them back to where they belong, and I think they looked a little more grateful than they had while they were lying about on the street.

I have done a good deed, and saved some trolleys from certain doom on the streets of my suburb! I'm a super-hero! =D

Quincy's Cooking Adventures

It is in my nature to be somewhat impulsive and to get very excited about new things. For instance, my first set of watercolours: I got them for my birthday. I opened the wrapping paper and was told “These are water colours!”. I got very excited about all the artistic potential I could now harness and ran to the kitchen, put the palette on the table, and poured water all over it. Adults came along just in time for me to make a mess, to rescue my present and explain to me just how water colours actually worked.

These two traits are very endearing in children and can result in life being one great, big, Learning Adventure. Unfortunately, I have to deal with still having these traits in strong proportions as an adult, and having the result be on a larger scale and far less endearing.

One example of this is my first foray into baking.

I had just received a recipe for oatbran muffins (meant to be good for cholesterol and goodness knows what else) and, as I’d tried them before, I already knew they were yummy. I bought ingredients, got home and, recipe in hand, got started. In my excitement, I hadn’t checked our self-raising flour status, and found we didn’t have any. That was ok - the recipe said you could either use that or use baking powder. I looked through the kitchen and found baking soda. That’s kind of powdery... It’ll do. At this point, I probably should have put my enthusiasm aside and asked my more experienced mother for some advice, but I was over 18 and an Adult and could cope with these little things.

I added the powdery substance, I added the blueberries, I scooped it into the muffin tray (forgetting to grease it first) and I popped it into the oven which I already knew was in very poor shape and not so good for baking things in.

I also forgot the sugar.

When I took the muffins out of the oven, they were not only stuck to the tray, very bland and actually pretty disgusting; they were also green. I had made alien muffins. These wouldn’t have looked out of place in a B-rate, kids’ sci-fi comedy, with their purplish lumps (what was left of the blueberries) sticking out of their green skin and their black, burnt bases and still kind of sloppy green insides...

I wonder what the Masterchef judges would have said about it?

So, I am still very childlike in my enthusiasm and impulsivity. I am gradually learning how to stop and think before I dive into something, but I do still often have to be told to read the instructions before I go and ruin everything forever (as my dear housemate knows only too well). But hey - I’ve had the house to myself for a week now, and aside from the initial incident with the cupboard door, nothing’s been broken or burnt to a crisp. Maybe I’ll be a proper adult one day, after all!


P.S.

If anyone understands the chemistry associated with baking soda turning blueberry juice green, do fill me in. I still haven’t figured out how it happened.

P.P.S.

I'd just like to put it out there that after a few more incidents with forgetting things like the sugar and the flour, I did eventually get them right, and they were delicious!

Why I need nice things - the kind that don't require maintenance.

I am horribly forgetful. I’m the kind of forgetful where I tell myself that I must do something and, a minute later, it's as if the thought had never existed. I just can’t hold on to a lot of thoughts because they tend to flit and fly and race around.

I’m really forgetful when it comes to my car - When I’m driving, I remember that I need to check the water and oil, but of course I can’t do that while I’m driving or with a hot engine so I have to wait until the engine’s cooled before I open it up to look, and by the time I’ve had it parked long enough I’ve completely forgotten and won’t remember until the next time I’m in the car (and if you’re wondering why I’m not checking it now, given I’m clearly not driving, it’s because I’ll completely forget to write this blog post if I stop now!).

Anyway.

My old car was old. It was 17 years old at the time and had had some damage done to the radiator in the past, so even though it was fixed it still needed an eye kept on it. I was told I had to check the water and oil at least once per week. I was supposed to be doing this anyway, as the oil had a slow leak that no mechanic in the world had yet been able to find the source of but, of course, I’m forgetful.

One week, I got sick. I had a fever. I also had a booking in a defensive driving course which I was unable to cancel or reschedule at such a late stage (being feverish, it didn’t occur to ask if they’d let me if I had a medical certificate).

So, I finally remembered to check the oil and water. I got up early, I took something for the fever, I checked my car and all was well. I drove to my driving course, a 45min drive from where I lived at the time.

I did the whole course and passed successfully. I even got a certificate to show that I did it! And this with a fever! I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Until I was driving through the city and noticed steam coming out of my engine. And then the car started rattling every time I put pressure on the accelerator, and there is no parking in the city that I could navigate to with the sick and the panic.

This was it. I was convinced that my car was dead, and it would stop in the middle of the road and it would all be my fault and I’d killed my car and I had nowhere to park so I’d just have to keep driving and driving until it stopped dead and then I’d get rear-ended by angry commuters... And I was still a half-hour drive from home and didn’t know my way around and was at serious risk of being totally lost in the city forever. I’d have to use my leftover change to buy chalk (which I actually can’t even touch because it FREAKS ME OUT) and spend the rest of my life drawing on the pavement.

I eventually found a parking spot near a train station not too far beyond where my car first started to show signs of death. Fortunately, I’d had experience with cars dying and needing to be towed in the past, and given the age of this car I made sure I had the highest level of road-side cover I could afford.

I called my insurance company, waited half an hour, got towed home. The next day, dad had a look at my car without much hope of it ever running again. He put some water in the radiator and turned the key.

And she started. As if nothing had ever happened. I could not believe it - I was thrilled. From that day forward, I vowed to never ever ever again check the water and oil in my car.

I hate calling companies on the phone.

The reason for this is that I've had some long and drawn-out experiences with calling up various companies to get problems fixed. Every time I need to, I freeze. Because this is what my brain conjures up for me:

Kindly made pretty by my Fiancé.
My original was a bit bedraggled...

Things which were not included in this flowchart are:

• Explaining your problem to the Real Person (first and second, if you selected the wrong option to start with)
• Having both Real People check your personal details
• Explaining your problem again, because they weren't ready for it the first time as they need to know who you are
• Spelling your name a few times before resorting to Alphas and Bravos and Charlies because your name is kinda foreign and they can't figure out which letter you're trying to sound out over a dodgy landline.

 Seriously, I'd rather just send an email.

Brainy goodness

I have a vindictive streak. Now, being "vindictive" has a lot of negative connotations; one of its synonyms is "spiteful".


Fortunately for everyone else, my vindictive streak is aimed primarily at myself.


I'll give you an example:
I've been feeling a bit down lately. It's the usual stuff: Stress from family, stress at work, blah blah ad nauseum. I found myself feeling extremely unmotivated, as a result. It went something like this:


Me: I should cook dinner!
Brain: Don't wanna.
Me: But... Dinner!
Brain: Don't wanna.
Me: Well, I should at least do some work.
Brain: Don't wanna.
Me: Couldn't I ju...
Brain: Don't wanna.
Me: WELL STUFF YOU BRAIN! I'M GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY MUAHAHAHAHAH! WATCH ME COOK THAT DINNER!!!


I fall into a small portion of the population which is actually motivated to do things by feeling totally unmotivated to do things.


Yes, I'm utterly insane.

Figures.

You know how your things have this innate sense that you're not treating them well? Like, as soon as you even consider buying a new car, your old one will sputter, stall, and then stop itself with black smoke coming out of your engine while you're in the right-hand lane of the freeway during peak-your traffic. You also ordered a new phone that morning, so of course the antena on your current one is now not picking up any reception and you're too scared of the other commuters beacause they're all running late for work and probably haven't had their coffee yet (makes for some very scary people).


Well, the Housemate left for 2 weeks today - she's house-sitting for her parents. She packed the usual essentials (some clothes, her computer, her cat), but it was enough to tip the house off that she'd gone.


I'm only sub-letting, so the House clearly doesn't recognise me as being a permanent resident (I really hope no vampires try to bite me before she gets back), and it threw a minor tantrum. It's the kind of tantrum that little kids throw when they're first trying them out - just a little whine and a few sobs; no screaming or throwing themselves on the floor. Yet.


As my fiancé and I were putting the dishes away, the door of the cupboard came off its hinges. Now, this may not seem overly dramatic, but it is when it's your first full day of having the place entirely to yourself and wanting desperately to prove what a mature and responsible adult you are, who can take care of an entire house for a fortnight and keep it in really good shape.


It's also not dramatic until the kitten decides that the small gap created by the door being half an inch off is an excellent place to stick his paw, just in case there's a mouse hiding there or something.


So there was some cat throwing, some really bad lines about screwing things, and some frustration over figuring out how the damned thing worked in the first place, but thankfully the door is back where it should be and Housemate can happily return to find it in place. Lets see if, at the end of the fortnight, it's the only thing still in place...