Hello Old Friends

The big move has happened, during a downpour, no less. The soaking I got while moving loads of stuff out of the old place and into the new has landed me with a cold. So once again, I'm sat at home with my trusty box of tissues, my collection of movies and books, and surrounded by half empty boxes, but with little enough idea of where the rest of my stuff is.

There's an added complication with the new place though. Because right now it's feeling like I'm not just sharing it with L. I've been home from work three days due to separation anxiety with my tissues. And of those 3 days, I've had unannounced visitors on 2. Because L made the horrendous mistake of giving her parents a spare key.

They mean well, I know they do. The first visit was to drop off L's surprise birthday present, a ladder that they left set up at the end of her bed. Today's is to make some adjustments to some dodgy plumbing in the back yard. So it's not like they're dropping in to have lunch in the house, or something. But as a person who is not related to them, and whose own parents would never dream of stopping by a shared house without giving some kind of heads up first, I find it strange. It's especially awkward given that I'm still in my pyjamas today. I mean, I could have been coming out of the shower, or anything.

It makes me a little concerned for the future of the sharing. Because I like my own space, and I like it to stay my own space. I find it a bit strange and off-putting that someone else's parents can - and will - just randomly drop by unannounced, even if we're not home. I'm not saying that they shouldn't visit, far from it. But I'm getting the feeling that sharing with L when her parents are half an hour away is going to be very different to sharing with L when they're half a world away. And I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to work.

Thank god she is planning on getting the keys back off them when our other old London flatmate C comes to visit at the end of the month. Maybe then it will feel more like it's my home, rather than having a sense that I'm just dossing.

Domestic Bliss

It's a few months now since the decision to get a flatmate. She moved in, and nothing has really been quite the same since. You'd hope I meant that in a good way, but really, no. It's not that we hate each other, or bicker, or anything drastic, really. But there is a chronic incompatibility looming on the horizon, and I don't think she's even noticed it.

She's a nice enough person, I suppose. Quite friendly, not hugely annoying, and keeps very much to herself. In fact most of the time, I'm not entirely sure if she's home or not. I have to peek through cracks or look for light shining under doors to get a sense of whether I'm alone or potentially have company. The general consensus is that it's an odd relationship in the flat. And that was before she started eating all of her meals in her room, as well spending the rest of her time holed up in there. In some respects, I guess she's the perfect flatmate. She pays bills on time, she's quiet, and she never hogs the couch or forces me to watch TV shows I don't like. But although I'm never sure of her current presence or absence, I can usually tell when she's been around.

Now I'm not the greatest with all things housekeeping. I vacuum the carpets once a month if I'm lucky, and do the shower once a quarter. Dishes are washed only when the pile on the sink gets too precarious, or there's a danger of being so many that need washing that they won't fit on the dish drainer. If I remember to change my sheets regularly, and actually have them washed by the time it occurs to me to change them again, I'm doing pretty well. But there are some things that I figure it's only fair to keep on top of when you're sharing. I think it would have been even more important if that sharing involved the use of someone else's things. But no, apparently not.

When I moved into this flat, everything I owned was new. Except my couch. And my kitchen table. And the antique bits and pieces. But you get the picture. The plates had never been eaten off. The sheets had never been slept on. The towels had never been used. The saucepans had never cooked anything. It was all still in quite good shape when she moved in. That can no longer be said about some things. It's to the point where, after helping me out while I was laid up with my back, my mother has been forced to offer me advice on how to get the saucepans back into something like a good condition, after months of things being cooked onto the sides. You can pick which pans she uses most often; they're the ones which are the most filthy outside, to the point that I can't get them clean even with steel wool, and have a soap scum residue inside them. You're supposed to wash pans AFTER cooking, not before.

And I could write it off if it was just pans, even if my pointed scrubbing of pans I haven't used has failed to have an effect (passive aggressive behaviour? perhaps, but direct suggestions for a cleaning roster have failed to have any impact). But being flat out with back pain and seeing your flatmate take the vacuum out for the first time ever, only to do her own room, having never cleaned the shower, never mopped any of the floors, it's getting a little much. I think the final straw came this weekend.

I haven't been using the cooktop much recently, at least partly because of the depressing state of my pans. But it drove me to the point of action on Saturday. I tried to clean the cooktop, because it was beginning to look like a bio-hazard; baked on sauce, overspill, actual chunks of food. But it wouldn't just wipe down. It required an actual cleaning product. I've never had to use a product to clean a cooktop before, I've always been able to manage it along the way. When I picked up the metal grate that covers the jets and found it was sticky and coated in a thick layer of baked on sludge, I was fuming. It drove me mad, to the point where I actually finished a cleaning job and looked for more - an unheard of phenomenon. I vacuumed. I spot cleaned the carpet. I swept. I mopped. By the time my sister-in-law popped in for a visit, the place was worthy of my mother's stamp of approval. I even changed the tea towels on the kitchen rail - yet another something that seems to fall into my area of responsibility. The flat was gleaming. The stove looked brand new. It was pristine. Then I headed out for dinner.

I was out again tonight. When I got home, there were once again unwashed saucepan lids on the stove. There was also cooked on sauce and a chunk of unidentifiable vegetable. There was also a load of washing that had been sitting in the washing machine all afternoon. Too bad if I needed to use it.

Individually, most of the problems I'm having with this girl aren't major. But the whole package, from the way she acts like she is responsible for inspiring any physical activity I take up - hello, woman, I have 2 prolapsed discs, you think I'm going to be taking up marathon running right now? But you're the only reason I might decide to start an activity? Or wait, you're the one who "inspired" me to take regular walks all summer until my back got screwed up, even though you didn't move in until February? Genius - to her complete inability to realise that you need to clean the kitchen floor when you spill stuff on it, or that pasta sauce will stain white cupboards if you leave it caked on dribbling down the front of them for a week or more, it all adds up and it's all driving me completely insane right now. And I'm at a loss for how to approach the problem in a way that won't blow up in my face, because clearly just leaving it until she notices have absolutely no impact at all.

How do you tell someone that you think they're a slob and that if they don't pull their finger out you're not going to be letting them use your stuff anymore? How do you suggest to a flatmate that the experiment isn't working, and that they should find somewhere else to live when the lease is up for renewal? And how do you bitch and moan to a friend who is about to buy a 4 bedroom house, without any intention of accepting the invitation to share that house?

Because L is about to take the plunge into the real estate market. She wants someone to share her mini-mansion, and I fit the bill quite nicely. She knows I'm fed up with my current living arrangement, she knows we rub along well enough as flat mates - or at least she knows she can put up with my more annoying habits, and that I won't kill her for hers. But I don't think I'm ready to go and live in her house, and that's another conversation that I don't know how to have. That said, I think I have more clues on that one than I do on how to kick out my current flat mate. If I could re-negotiate my rent, I'd be happy enough to stay here on my own. But dear god, something better change soon.

15 minutes

It's funny the things that can get you annoyed. Sometimes it's big things - outrage at social injustice, laws that allow on the spot fines for swearing, stripping the powers from the equal opportunities commission, arguing against a carbon tax that could help slow environmental degradation. Sometimes it's pettiness - that newspapers and magazines feel compelled to devote so many column inches to people who just happen to have won the genetic lottery. Today, apparently, it's the completely insignificant that is getting my goat.

I'm on the final stretch of the assignment run. The last one is due tomorrow, and I'm within sight of the finish line. It's so close that I allowed myself a break to watch some TV - Winners and Losers an amusing little comedy/drama about the lives of four women who win the lottery. It was supposed to start at 9, an annoying enough time to start a show in a land where hourly shows start on the half hour or thereabouts, but manageable. Or it is when Channel 7 don't run so far over time that the show is 15 minutes late. And all because of Australia's Got Talent. Australia apparently has so much talent that it can't be edited to a reasonable time slot. It's not like the show is live, folks. They're quite happy to edit other programs so they can cram in more and more ads, but this one they stretch out to make sure there is enough time to repeat the bloody phone numbers for voting lines over and over again.

So here I am, sitting on the couch again (it's a common theme lately, and clearly I've been doing it too much because my back is feeling like it's about to give up again) and silently building up an impotent rage. Because what can I do about that fact that a TV network decides not to follow it's own programming guide? And then it hits me just how pointless the whole thing is anyway, given that it doesn't affect anyone in a life and death way, and I get angry at myself for being too caught up in something so insignificant, and the cycle repeats ad nauseum until my head explodes, or I find my way onto my blog to blow off steam. I think I might just be sufficiently calm to get back to writing about teaching humanities in secondary schools...Although it's on Channel 7's head if something along these lines creeps into the section on civics and citizenship, because Australia may have talent, but Channel 7's programming department is lacking severely in the clock department.

Just one of those days

Some days, you wonder why you bother. The days when you don't want to get out of bed. When you don't want to leave the house. You don't want to spend two hours standing talking in circles with one of the world's most persistently annoying people, while his wife is in tears beside him protesting that you don't know what she's going through. Actually, you know in excruciating detail what she's going through, because you've heard it for the past two hours. And that's just on this one day, in this one meeting. When he husband called you four times the day before, you heard it again then. And when he comes back into the office later that afternoon for another crack, you know exactly what he's going to say. Because part of his persistent annoyance is his ability to say exactly the say thing, over and over again, without even varying the wording.

This particular man is one of those people who is a shade of grey. Not even a shade with an exotic of impressive name, like French Grey. He's just grey. You get the feeling that he repeats himself so often, because experience has shown him that nobody really listens to him the first time around. He's one of life's victims, the sort of person that nothing ever goes right for. I have to wonder if it's a chicken or the egg situation though; which came first, him being a boring, anal retentive, leech, or his inability to get people on-side? Scratch the wondering, I think I know.

So, it was one of those days. The kind where you work hard all day, even if it's just prying lose the tick of a purchaser who has burrowed into your skin and is slowly poisoning you, but don't actually achieve anything - not even getting rid of the tick, or any of the others like him who have filled your voicemail box while you've been dealing with him. A day where you get home and want to have a drink to get rid of the day, only to find that there is nothing in the house to drink, not even the dregs of a month old bottle of wine in the fridge that was saved for cooking.

It's the kind of day that can make you start looking for a new job, only to realise that your references are all out of date, and you don't think putting your current boss down would do the trick. Where you find quite a few jobs that seem pretty well paid that you think you're qualified for, but you also don't think you should apply for them because you know you're studying and that you're going to need to take some time off soon to deal with the practical rounds of teaching that will be coming up soon - something that new employers won't like at all.

Yep. It's just one of those days.

The best advice

I'm going slightly stir crazy at the moment. My back is still not all it should be, so I'm hemmed into my flat quite efficiently. And everybody wishing me well and offering help is actually driving me to distraction.

One of the things I've been learning while I've been if not laid up then at least slowed down, is that back pain is one of those things that everybody either has a cure for, or can recommend someone who does. So much of it is contradictory that it's of next to now use, but people feel obliged to offer up their kernels of knowledge, and I have to accept all of them like a grateful beggar on the street. I might be drawing things in a fairly harsh light here, but I've had so many recommendations of good chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists, doctors, acupuncturists and masseurs that if I took them all up not only would I not be able to move even as much as I can now, I'd be getting shuttled around like a tennis ball, shunted from end to end, as I ran to all the appointments.

It's not that I'm not ungrateful. I do understand that it was concern that drove my grandmother to offer to call my aunt if there was anything wrong with me (although why I wouldn't just solve all the problems by calling my mother, who is not only a damn site closer, but able to drive, I have yet to figure. At the very least, surely I'd just call the aunt directly, if needed?). But folks, really, there's a limit to how much of this I can take, and I've about reached it. Thank god I've been a little more mobile today, even if it was just a grandmotherly shuffle. There's a light shining at the end of the tunnel. And best of all, it's not offering me any bloody advice.

The art of visiting

I've been playing host to a house guest for the past week. I like to think I've been a pretty good host - provided spare keys so they can come and go as they please, directions at any time of day, suggestions for what to do, and three days of escorted touring that has added about 600km to the mileage on my almost-new car - at hefty cost in fuel considering that it's Christmas. Most important of all, I have taken her along to my family Christmas, making sure that she wasn't orphaned for the day. I have taken her to my friends' Christmas, including buying a Kris Kringle present for her so that she didn't feel left out. I have cooked for her on no less than three occasions, two of them after having been at work all day.

In return, I have had the pleasure of her company, received a bottle of booze, and had my dishes washed twice (although apparently, finding the place where everything goes was a little too much work). I have had my shower clogged with her hair, I have had my bathroom sprayed with water, my tap twisted out of alignment, my spare bedroom made into a bigger sty than I ever managed, every power point touched left switched on, every light in the flat on at various times, a hissy fit chucked when I dared to suggest that on Boxing Day perhaps I might see some of MY friends that I haven't caught up with for Christmas instead of trekking all the way down to the frigging Mornington Peninsula for her to see some friends of her aunt's who she met when she was 20. You'll notice, the one thing I haven't received - any sign of thanks.

I know I won't comment, but I have almost ripped her head off on several occasions, the best one being when she insisted that she knew my mother MUST have a particular cleaning product in the house, in spite of me knowing that she never used the stuff. My knowledge of my mother's house cleaning habits was, of course, inferior, because she dived under the sink and came out with the product in question, and a very smug look on her face (turns out that kitchen benches must be cleaned with disinfectant before dishes can be stacked on them - wiping them with a damp cloth simply won't do). Not sure she noticed it later when Mum picked up the bottle of cleaner and asked where that had come from, because she didn't know she had it. I'm also incapable of even folding my own laundry. A trip to the loo before sorting things into a state that she considered appropriate for them was too big a delay for her. I came out to find her folding my underpants, and not listening when I did everything short of swear at her to get her to bugger off and leave my clothes alone. If I'd wanted to move them, I would have done it myself, as soon as I was out of the loo. We've been mates for a while, but we're hardly at the point where it's fine to fold each other's undies.

Earlier today, when someone cut in front of me as they got on the freeway, and I benefited from the wonderful joy of her driving instruction, about how she would have acted. Me having my foot on the brake was not enough of a response, apparently. I should have changed lanes. I should have done this, I should have done that, because this delightful guest of mine is always in the right, and can never concede that she might be wrong - although she has proven to be so quite a few times. I should know all of this. In fact, I did know it before she arrived, but it had never been brought home quite so strongly to me before. Or maybe it had, during some of the weeks that we spent working together on hotels in the UK. I remember seething with resentment quite often, but knowing that me venting any of it could very well lead to a stand-up fight, so I always swallowed the bile that rushed to spill out of my mouth. And I've done it again this time, biting back the words that I want to say, the times when I can feel the steam about to blow the top of my head off. Or more likely, the top of her head. I'm not known among my closest friends and family for my subtlety, but I'm not close enough to this one that I will blow my top openly. So I seethe and plot revenge, instead.

But if she thinks I won't repay the favour of being the world's most annoying house guest by visiting her in Brisbane in 2011, she can have another think. Of course, I can't chuck a tanty when she doesn't dessert friends and family during the holiday season to chauffeur me around town - her family is still back in South Africa - but I can make life difficult for her. I can run up her power bills, her water bills, I can be messy, I can sit around and watch her prepare dinner after a day at work. I can give her advice on how she should be doing things, I can correct her every thought, wilfully misunderstanding her, and never giving an inch in an argument even when the people involved are talking about completely separate issues. I can do all of this.

The question is, can I do all of that and still keep the friend? I think not, on the whole. And the annoying part is, when she's not being the world's biggest know-it-all, she's great fun. It's just that at close quarters, the fun gets buried in the pedantic crap that she also spews, and the fact that you realise she doesn't know half as much as she thinks she does. I can't see the friendship lasting long-term, in all honesty. But I'll be damned if I give it up before I get a weeks free room, board and transportation in Brisbane.

Bill me

Somewhere out there, some companies have put together a list. On this list is the name of every person that those companies feel can be over-charged on their bills, without anybody noticing. Somehow, my name seems to have ended up on that list.

First there was Lumos, a power and gas company, who keep trying to charge me for power and gas. Two problems. Firstly, they aren't my provider, I go through a different company, which I have told them several times over. They still keep sending me bills. But the biggest reason why I know I don't owe them any money, apart from the fact that my name isn't on the actual bill? It's because at least some of the charges go back before I'd even signed the lease on my flat.

Then the phone company tried it on, adding a ridiculous amount to a bill, but deleting it as soon as I queried it, telling me that if I hadn't been informed about the charge when I signed up, then I didn't have to pay it. The ease with which I got them to take it off makes me think it's a "hit-'em-up-and-hope-they-pay-it" kind of charge. Well, nobody gets one over on this little black duck, let me tell you. Especially not to the tune of $80 a month. It all adds up.

This month, it was City Link who had a crack. I use the toll roads they administer for work, on the rare occasions that I have to head into head office, and even more rarely when I'm heading into town for a night out. It doesn't happen often. So getting a $140 bill for a month came as something of a surprise, especially given that the last month had been a zero balance. I shouldn't have been totally surprised. I'd had a warning shot fired over my bow last week, when they sent me a text saying that my account was being suspended. I couldn't work out why, but didn't get around to finding out why, because I wasn't planning on using it in the near future. But now I want to use it, and I can't. The strangest part is that nobody can actually tell me why my account has been suspended. All the bills that have been issued before have been paid. This one is in dispute, and only arrived in the mail today. The kicker, though, is that the account was suspended 2 days before the statement was even issued.

I have to say, I hate that the roads are tolled in the first place. The most commonly used stretch for me is a road that was built when my mother was still at school. I begrudge having to pay to use it. Before I moved away, I refused point blank to drive on it, out of principle. Notice, time in London has eroded my principles in favour of ease of use. Because it does make my life a whole lot easier, halving my travel time to and from head office. But if the price of convenience is a 25 minute phone call with someone who couldn't actually resolve my query, and could barely enter my problem into the system because there wasn't an automated option, then I'll go back to taking my time to get places. And if they argue that it was my car, I can call in character witnesses to help defend me, because anyone who knows me at all would agree, there's no way in hell that I was passing under one of the City Link gantries at 06:50.

So I'm issuing a warning. I've had enough. Any company that thinks it's OK to over charge me, or add false charges to my bills, don't say you weren't warned. Just ask Virgin in the UK. I am capable of prolonged phone calls where I am able to maintain anger and coherence, all at the same time. It might have taken me a while to get Virgin to do what they were supposed to, but I know how to do it now. And I don't have the cash to throw away on the whims of some accounts department screw up. If you see my name on that list, cross it out. Because one way or another, I'm not paying and you'll regret sending me a bill for something that I didn't use.

Clarity

Thinking about it, I need to add a little clarity to the miserable post I've just put up. I know it was miserable. I'm kind of wallowing in it for the night. What can I say? Sometimes you just need to curl up on the couch with a vat of chocolate ice cream (or in this case a jar of Nutella). I think a few explanations are also in order.

First up, I am not moving back to the UK. I am not thinking of moving back to the UK. Not in any serious fashion at any rate. I'm back here in Australia, and I'm generally happy enough being here. There are many advantages to it.

So now that's out of the way, I should probably explain a few things. There may be someone reading this who has read my blog for a while, so they will remember that I had what I can only call a dark period for a while there. The bit where a friend who reads this observed that I sounded like I wanted to slit my wrists. Another friend became very concerned for me and attempted a kind of intervention. I'm not in that place. A large part of my completely wet blanket mood comes from two things; I haven't been getting much sleep lately, for one reason or another (mostly stress related, actually; did I mention that thesis deadline in the last paragraph or so?) and on top of that, I've started cutting back on my sugar and caffeine intake, attempting to get it to ordinary levels, which was one of the contributing factors last time I slid into the blackest of black holes. It's Spring, too, which in Melbourne means pollen clogging the nose, and, in my particular case, the type of headaches that can make you forget to breath, let alone to anything else. Add to that an epic collection of stupid people to deal with at work today (clue: if I'm asking you if you've sent me the latest version of the drawings, because I can't see the difference between this lot and the last lot, you're not getting your plans approved. Just a hint), and you have a vat of misery sitting waiting for me. And there was no Hellcats on TV tonight to jolly me out of it (Pretty cast? Check. Cheerleaders doing the physically impossible? Check. Implausible story lines? Check. poorly acted vehicle for a "triple threat" a la Lindsey Lohan/ Olsen twins movies? Check. God I love that show). And I'm having both a fat day and, given the sudden warmer weather and my need to have actual work clothes, wardrobe shortage issues. I'm not without reasons for being down in the dumps. I've decided to retreat into gloom and doom for the night. I live along, I have that choice and nobody is here to complain if I decide to listen to the Waifs sing about being in London Still on repeat. Or if I chose to blog about it. So sue me, because that's the only way anybody outside this room is going to have any impact on this mood, and by then I'll have moved on.

Oh good. Looks like I've made the transition into nasty piece of work. Tomorrow I shallbe all smiles, even if they're sarcastic, with service returned to normal. No need to confiscate pointy things just yet.

There's the rub

Today felt like summer. It probably helped that daylight saving kicked off overnight, meaning that even though it's almost 8 it's still a little light outside. It took me a while to work that out this morning. I have a phone and laptop that are programmed to set their own time, but my watch and all my other clocks hadn't changed. I actually had to get online to double check the time (thanks very much timeanddate.com, by the way. Lifesaver)

But that's all beside the point. I spent today with the windows of the flat open, basking in the glorious sunshine as I moved around, puttering (i.e. procrastinating) in my linen shirt and cut off jeans. For someone who feels that she has gone without a summer since early 2006, it was like a slice of heaven. Or it was, until a mosquito found its way into the flat. See, only two of my windows have insect screens. And, as fate would have it, they aren't the windows that stay open without props. So I take my chances, or I have until today. I shut the windows a little before sundown - prime mozzie time, in my experience - but it was too late.

And now, I have a problem. Two, actually, one on my wrist, one on my elbow. Which leads me to the question, how the hell did I not notice that there was a bloodsucker taking a nip of me on my right wrist while I was cooking dinner? It's not like my hand was still for long, either. Now I've got to keep reminding myself not to scratch, so it doesn't get infected. Because I'm allergic to mosquitoes. Of course I am. Sometimes, I'm even allergic to oxygen. Why would I not be allergic to mozzies? Bloody bugs.

And speaking of bugs, it turns out that my nearest neighbour here is a Collingwood supporter. He was home with a friend yesterday to watch the Grand Final replay. Personally, I wish that they could have just kept on repeating the draw until everybody gave up and moved onto next season. I wasn't actually watching the game. I didn't have to. I could hear the cheers from next door. One or other of them footy fans was outside smoking at regular intervals, polluting the air with smoke as well as sound. Turns out, mosquitoes aren't the only kind of bugs around here. Bloody Collingwood supporters.

So now I'm left with a dilemma. I know where the Collingwood supporter is, but there is nothing I can do about it. Whereas I can't find the mozzie, no matter how I search. A brief glimpse here, a flitting shadow there. But make no mistake. Once I find the little bugger, it won't be taking any more of my hemoglobin, that's for sure. If only I could do the same to the Collingwood supporter.