Oh Blog It All

Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a good night’s sleep? Do you even know that I count two complete hours of sleep in any given day as manna from heaven? Do you even care? No, of course you don’t. I can’t say I blame you. Were things different, were I in your shoes, I’d be pointing a gun in this direction of the room as well.

I know you’re going to shoot me, I want you to shoot me. But make sure that you kill me. If you miss the first time I promise to sit still and wait for the second shot, I want you to kill me. Is that a look of surprise I see on your face? What, you didn’t plan on actually killing me? Well you should because I deserve to die.

I want to die, to sleep, right now they’d be about the same. I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep, a whole eight hours of unconscious bliss. It might have been last year sometime, maybe autumn. If I’d have known then that it would be the last time I had a good night’s sleep I would have taken notice of the details. I would have made a note of the date, of the dreams I had.

But maybe I wouldn’t have, you know, ’cause sleep just slipped away so quietly that I hardly noticed. Some nights I’d struggle to fall asleep, toss and turn for an hour or so before I finally did fall asleep. Then on other days I’d be awake before the alarm went, I’d lie in bed for two, three hours maybe, just thinking about things, trying to remember my dreams. I can’t remember any of them now, my dreams, but I seem to remember that I used to have good dreams. Sex dreams, yeah, those were good, better then the real thing.

It got bad, this not sleeping thing. What do you call it? Insomnia? Yeah, insomnia, it got pretty bad. I even went to a doctor, first time in eighteen years. He said it was stress but gave me some pills anyway to help me sleep.

Wouldn’t you know it though the pills didn’t work. Someone, might have been the lady at the Super Saver working the till, she said that some of the sleeping tabs just don’t do the trick unless you wash them down with a small glass of wine. I was pretty desperate, I bought a box of wine right then.

It worked, sort of. I did toss and turn a bit and I didn’t get a full eight hours but God I felt so good the next morning. You want medical advice, you go see that lady at the Super Saver, she knows a thing or two. When I went back to the doctor for a check-up I didn’t say anything about the wine. I’m a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them. Yeah, to hear me say it now, after all that has happened, yeah, I’m not stupid.

Things went well for a while then the damn pharma company had to go and pull the pills off the shelf. Said something about it doing damage to my liver or my pancreas or something. What the fuck are pancreas anyway and why do I need them? I thought my eight hours would be more important. But I made a little discovery I did. See, if I just had a tad more then my single glass of wine every night it seemed to do the trick, I got some sleep.

This was a good discovery, you know, because box wine is a whole lot cheaper and easier to come by then those pills. I’m quite partial to the late harvest stuff, it’s good stuff and I have the best dreams then.

And then that night, I was out of late harvest, had to make do with that dry red crap my last ex left behind. I tried a bit, I tried a lot of it actually, but the shit didn’t work. That’s why I was driving, just up to the Super Saver to get me some of the good stuff, the stuff that works.

I don’t know too much about kids. I thought a five year old would be, I don’t know, taller maybe? I wasn’t going fast really, it’s an old car. But suddenly he was there. I think I saw him, part of him at least. A tuft of blond hair just visible over the bonnet. I didn’t really know what it was but I slammed brakes anyway.

I saw you though, just before it happened. You were standing in the driveway, facing away from the road. You were talking to that hot looking brunette. Yeah, I saw her too, hard to miss her really.

You should really pull that trigger now, I’m all talked out. I’m a child killer, I don’t deserve to live. So go ahead, shoot me in the head. You might want to stand a little further back though, I hear it splatters quite a bit. I’m tired lady, so, so, tired. Please, for both of us, just pull the God damn trigger.

While my life doesn’t revolve around my cellphone, it is a rather important part of it. In addition to keeping me in contact with my family and my creditors, it also acts as my timepiece and my alarm clock.

The alarm clock function is especially important because the only other alarm clock I have has been dropped so many times that if I want to set the alarm for six o’clock in the morning I need to start doing the math at least a week before. Algebra, geometry and even trigonometry are not that much of a challenge for me. Unfortunately I need advanced calculus to set the alarm clock. I don’t think my failure to grasp calculus is an acceptable excuse for being late for work.

My cellphone, a Samsung Something-or-other, is rather fancy in that it lets me program the alarm times so I don’t need to set the alarm every night. However did I survive in an analogue world? So great, I press a few buttons and after that my biggest concern is that I keep the phone charged, it would do the rest.

One small problem though, my cellphone is not in touch and in tune with south african public holidays. It really doesn’t care that the 16th of June is National Youth Day. It does care that the day fell on a Thursday and because I told it so, it woke me up at 05h40. Um ja, great way to start a public holiday.

Fast forward to yesterday when I finished my stint as a receptionist - Thank God! I don’t think I could have taken one more day of that (I’d elaborate but it’s still really difficult for me to talk about it, just next time you pass the receptionist smile and tell her she’s doing a damn good job because she sure as hell is not doing an easy job, trust me). Where was I? Oh yeah, reception duties done and me looking forward to starting my lovely new half day job on Monday, but getting to sleep in this morning first.

Naturally I had to reprogram the alarms on my cellphone to accommodate my new working schedule - Monday to Thursday with Fridays all my own (I may have mentioned this before). It took me the better part of 30 seconds to do this complex bit of programming.

Just one small problem, today is not Friday. I like to describe myself as a details person, I may have to rethink that description.

My dental fortunes have been a bit mixed. When I was younger (primary school age) and my parents still had medical aid we used to go to the dentist semi-regularly. My only memories of those visits were the interminable wait to get to see the esteemed All Matters Dental Professional and the Professional’s utter conviction that I simply had too many teeth. He deemed it his Hippocratic duty to remove as many as he could before the medical aid ran out.

Thankfully my dad decided to leave his very stable and secure job with good salary and great benefits and go into business for himself. This meant that there no longer any medical aid and I no longer had to endure dentist visits. I love my Dad.

Then I hit the ripe old age of twenty-four and I know it was old because wisdom comes with age and my wisdom teeth decided to make an appearance at about the same time. Naturally I ignored them for as long as I could but it got really painful and so off I went to the a dentist which came highly recommended by one of my colleagues.

We shall call him Dr Bow Tie, though I never saw him wear one. Dr Bow Tie was a rather hip dentist. He wore really tight fitting jeans and he was truly gorgeous (of course we’re not talking Ryk Neethling gorgeous but it was close). In addition to the wisdom teeth trouble I also had a cavity or two or five (it had been more then a decade since my last visit, cut me some slack). This was good news, it meant I would have to pay a few more visits to Dr Bow Tie so that I could get the cavities and wisdom teeth fixed and he could pay off his Porche.

First he fixed the cavities and then we booked a special visit so that he could remove two of the troublesome wisdom teeth. I knew that visit would be the last for a long time (he was cute but I’m still not a huge fan of dental professionals) so I took time to do my hair just right and did my make up just so and touched up my lipstick just before I entered his surgery so as to dazzle him with my now cavity free smile.

I’ll spare you the bloody details, suffice it to say that two of my best pieces of enamel art were soon free standing. As I left I was ever so sure to give Dr Bow Tie my best smile - the man was single after all and Discovery had just depleted my Medical Savings Account in his favour.

I left the practice smiling. I was smiling when I got into my car and I was smiling when I glanced at my reflection in the rear view mirror. At least it felt as if I was smiling, but staring back at me was a retarded clown with bad hand eye co-ordination. Not only was most of my face dead and hanging limp but that lovely shade of lipstick I had so carefully chosen was now smeared all over my face. Oh my God.

Thank God we moved to another province and the chances of me running into Dr Bow Tie are ever so slim.

But I wasn’t going to take chances and I was all set to never see a dentist again in my life when my front tooth darn went and chipped itself. I could have lived with the chipped tooth too were it not for the pained expression on my Geek’s face every time I smiled at him. And when I suggested we go out in public he nearly died just thinking of the embarrassment. I, being the good wife, decided to do something nice for my husband and went off to see Dr Fennel.

Now for the record Dr Fennel is very cute, very married and very smart. He saw right away that pulling out a few existing teeth every time I pay him a visit is not a viable business proposition, I only have a few left. His best bet is doing fillings on the existing teeth and if he wants to make the big extraction bucks then he’s got to go for my unborn teeth - my last two remaining (and in hiding and can you blame them) wisdom teeth.

Dr Fennel of course slipped up just a tad though as he’s not going to be able to extract them himself, seems they’re a little close to the nerve for that (they’re not wisdom teeth for nothing you know). So Dr Fennel has referred me to a specialist. He’s given me three options: Dr Black, Dr Blue and Dr To Go. Dr Fennel has also given me a referral letter for which ever specialist I choose (or can get an appointment with).

Now of course I have not read the letter, the envelope is sealed after all. And this one time when some schmuck opened my sealed letters and read them I divorced him. But I can, and will now, speculate as to what the letter says.

Hey there Good Buddy

PS - when does Whale Viewing Season start again?

As I said, I’ve merely speculated on the contents of the letter of referral and the chances of Dr’s Black, Blue or To Go actually confirming the contents are slim to none. It’s been more then a month already, maybe even two and I’ve yet to pick up the phone and make an appointment. I’ve decided that my last two remaining wisdom teeth can just stay where they are. God knows I need all the wisdom I can get and as He’s not currently answering my e-mails I guess my teeth will have to do the talking.

Well, it seems that Monday I will be heading off back to the workplace. Specifically the place I worked at before and totally hated. Wish I could say that I needed the money desperately but I don’t, not really, see my Geek is in IT so people just throw money at him - he doesn’t manage to catch too much of it but that is something else.

So why am I going back, if not for the cold, hard wads of cash they won’t give me? Well there are a lot of benefits to returning to work at that place, whether they are good reasons for returning to work, well I’ll let you decide.

First and foremost is the weight loss benefit, there is just no way I’ll be eating at the canteen. I have two words for you, fish biryani, I don’t think I need to elaborate.

Okay so that is the only benefit. And it’s only for a week and a half because somebody has to answer the phones while the receptionist is off to catch soft balls in Amsterdam.

If all goes well at this receptionist stint then I might just land myself a cushy half-day job that I know moms all over would kill for (but then you’d get caught and go to prison and I’d have to fill in for you anyway). Yes folks, provided they offer to pay me slightly better then slave wages I’ll be working four mornings a week and having Friday all to myself. Go ahead, envy me.

Look, I’m doing this for your benefit as well. I tell you that there is nothing more inspiring nor a better time to write then when I’m cooped up in an office. This is totally a me thing, I have accepted it, embraced it and I plan to make the most of it. Certainly this blog can only but benefit from me working again.

So please hold thumbs that it all works out for me.

Oh, and I am so choosing “jersey” as my next network password.

So, I got a cold and I nearly died. Well, not nearly died like in the Omo* sense of the term but more like in the “I thought I was going to die but of course I didn’t because I just had a cold not the plague or something as serious as that” sense. But truly I can say that I have never been that sick with a cold in my life. It was like it was never going to end. And then there was the fatigue, it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed in time to watch Dr Phil every day.

But just over two weeks of my life later and I’m almost recovered. I still have a nagging cough (which may or may not be psychosomatic - I really like the taste of Vicks cough mixture) but otherwise I’m fine, able to read lots of blogs (I went for about four days of not being in contact with the Internet at all - like I said I nearly died) and I’m even thinking of posting something to my own blog as well.

And I’ve actually started work on something to, just as soon as I can manage a decent title and of course there is that ending that I just never seem able to master. Like now, I don’t know how to end this bit either. Oh well, this lame sentence will have to do while I go take another swig of cough muti.

* or was it Surf, it was so long ago that I cannot recall

Disclaimer: This post is written purely for my Geek’s benefit because he says it’s been way too long since I did post something on this blog.