Bitch and Moan

I should blog. I ought to blog. There should be plenty for me to write about. I am, after all, on leave from work and in a city with so much to offer that I could never tire of it. That's all true, it is. I'm a single girl, with plenty of friends she can call on and no ties to hold her back.

Except that I do have ties. They may not have held me back today, but they're still there. Of course, they're not an excuse I could possibly use for the fact that I'm in the process of following up my busy day of housework with an equally busy day of sitting on my butt. Nor do they excuse the way I've been wondering all day what modern housewives without kids get up to all day - how the hell do they fill their time, given that there's only so much you can give to vacuuming, mopping, washing clothes and dishes, and I've done it all in one day? But they do offer something to explain me using one of my much loved leave days in cleaning the flat (it was my turn, really, given that I hadn't done any housework since before I went home for two weeks. Or even further back, since before I went to Norway).

And it's a much repeated refrain for me. I'm broke. Again. And it's only the middle of the month. My ever shrinking pay packet has shrunk to the point where it doesn't even see me through the first half of the month anymore. In the three years and one day that I've lived in London, I've managed to go backwards. Not just a little backwards; that could be understood, given the amount of travel I do. No, I've raced back to be where I was at before I finished uni. The first time around. In 2001.

But I'm still somehow better off than some. I at least appreciate the opportunities that are out there, and grab them when I can. L announced the other day that she doesn't think she's going to get through her to-do list because she has too much to do at work. I felt like slapping her. Here am I, trying desperately to figure out a way to get to tick off just one more thing on my list but knowing that unless my trend is reversed in a hurry it's not going to happen. There she is, in a secure job that is paid roughly three times better than me - and that's base rate, without allowing for all the extra hours she does - won't get through her want-list because of work? What did she move to the UK for, then? To work? She doesn't understand why it makes me so angry to see her wasting her chances. Clearly, she doesn't empathise with the sense of powerless fury that overtakes me when I hear such a pathetic excuse for putting off your life. If I was in her situation, there's a good chance I'd still be broke. But what a beautiful time I'd be having in the meantime.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.
Edna St Vincent Millay