Picnic By The Motorway

Hi there! I have time to write because I’m off work sick with… well, a cold I guess. Woah, I know, a cold.

Yesterday I got out of bed to go to the doctor, who suspects I have a chest infection but isn’t all that keen for me to start throwing back the antibiotics (she prescribed them but said, maybe just see how you go for the rest of the week before filling the prescription). Today I spent half of the day in bed, and have since been plonked in front of daytime TV and I swear, if there was a job that required you to sit around in your pyjamas watching Oprah, Ellen, and re-runs of The Late Show with David Letterman I would work my ass off to get qualified for that position.

Of course, I’m a bit too scared to admit I have a cold on the other blog as people tend to put on their health-police hats and accuse me of constantly being under the weather before making assumptions about what a poor lifestyle I must lead to let threaten my health on such a regular basis. Okay, I’ve had like four colds this year, it happens. Also, I am a bit of a grizzler, so really I’ve had like two proper colds and the others were just threatening to become colds without actually taking hold. Point being… sometimes I live in fear of my readers. Gasp! What will they think of me if I admit I watch Shortland Street?!

I have been judged because I’m having trouble toilet-training my puppy. It couldn’t possibly be that he is a little slow on the uptake, nooooo, it must be that I selfishly bought him from a pet shop (not from a pet shop?! Shame on me!) and didn’t remotely consider the welfare of the dog in favour of satisfying my fleeting self-indulgent desire for something cute and fluffy nipping at my ankles. Except that I already had a dog, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

I love my readers for the most part, I really really do, but on occasion they piss me off. More often than not, I just suck it up and smile.

Sigh. It’s because I have a cold.

And then 23852309 years later, she wrote a new entry.

Whatever, I’ve had shit going on, y’know?

On Tuesday I’m heading to the Gold Coast, and while the weather is looking a little dicey (this week: “hello, how would you like thirty-degrees of awesome?” | next week: “I conjured up eighteen-degrees for you – yeah, you might as well be in Auckland”) I’m very much looking forward to the excursion. Mostly because when you are in another country there is less expectation to respond to crap your Blackberry is throwing at you.

However, there are two things that have suddenly occurred to me about the holiday.

1) Because my sister and I will be joined by her two young children, there will be no going out and getting tipsy while making silly decisions at the casino. Mostly because there will be NO GOING OUT. You can’t just pop out while the kidlets slumber, that’s the mistake Madeleine’s parents made, remember?

2) Oh shit. Last Summer I was at least a whole dress size smaller than I am now. If things heat up in the Gold Coast, I’m going to have to fashion a romper suit out of the hotel curtains.

Now I’m not sure if I want it to be sunny or if I’d prefer it to be cool enough for me to wear my fat winter clothes.

Also, does anyone know where I might find a stockist of the Samsonite Ultralite range? In red? I’d quite like to get a cabin bag to match my new suitcase. Women eh? Pfft.

Today Leroy had… well, you know, he got fixed. Poor fella. He’s definitely not himself tonight, a bit groggy and dopey, but doing fine nonetheless. Of course there are certain advantages to having downstairs-surgery; tonight Leroy will be sleeping in the bedroom for the very first time. He also got tinned food tonight. The fancy vet stuff.

In fact, I don’t think I ate as well as Leroy did tonight. Both Joel and I were stupid tired when we got home. He was starving, but I wasn’t ready for dinner. The hunger got the better of Joel so he devoured a pack of chips and didn’t feel like dinner by the time my tummy started rumbling, and that was a giant pain in the ass because I wanted him to go and fetch some takeaways. He really only falls for that if he’s hungry too.

At around 9:30 I gave in and shoved a couple of frozen fish thingees into the oven. My goodness, I am so tired I spent several minutes trying to remember what you call the fish thingees – because I know it’s not “thingees”. However, I also know that investing even more minutes into punishing my memory won’t do a single bit of good. Brain est mush. Fish thingees est fish thingees.