I Saw Your Reflection

There was a homeless man stood outside the shop this morning. He was stroking someone else's dog, which was tied to the post by the door. The Labrador had a sleek, glossy black coat. His was green, filthy and full of holes, it looked sick, scabbed, sore. He had a huge bushy beard, stained yellow around his mouth. The dog liked the smell of him, but people coming out of the shop started back when they saw him and sidestepped him, making every effort not to look like they were doing so. He looked up from the dog and saw me coming, then drew himself up by what was left of his lapels and gave me a big wide smile. "Hello!" I looked behind me, in case he was talking to someone else, and this made him laugh. He told me to have a lovely day.

I got a no. 15 from Nassau St. As I walked down the aisle, a man in the back seat bellowed at me. "Ah, hello!" I didn't look up. He sounded delighted to see me. I knew he meant me - I was the last to board the bus and the only one in the aisle. I had my headphones on. I pretended not to hear him and shuffled into a seat. "You're looking very well, anyway!" The woman sat beside me shifted slightly, afraid to make her sideways stare too obvious. She was looking at me, not at him. I could smell him from my seat two rows up, stale sweat and sour clothes. I didn't begrudge her the gawk, I'd have done the same. The curiosity is not the madman but the object of his shouty affections. He stopped talking then, maybe watched people getting on and off. That's what I did. He wasn't quiet. He beat an out of time tattoo on the floor with his feet, stomping to the beat of his own discomfort.

When I stood up to get off, he shouted again. Top of his lungs, which were filled with enthusiasm.

He told me to have a lovely day.

A Concession

"It's affectation, compensating for a lack of content."
I was going to post that short story I wrote for my class last week, the one with violence and poetic impulses. I copy-and-pasted it into Blogger, removing the "dint" that my tutor had red-penned as SILLY. He wrote that my line about the shirt was "stupendous" and though I think stupendous is a silly word, it was a balm for last week's critical burn.

I check his notes for more dints. Corny. At least that isn't in caps. I wonder if it might be a little presumptuous to publish a short story on a personal blog. Stu pen dous - I roll it out, syllable by syllable. Dous pronounced dus? All of a sudden I lose confidence in that too.

"It looks more like you than the others."
Annie emailed me a photo of myself, lying in the bath. My hair is immersed in the milky paint, my curls creeping back in, black dark against the white water. My face is in profile, a small chin and a pointy nose, and my right breast and shoulder are exposed. It's black and white and beautiful. I want the world to see me looking like that. I want to compensate for all the days when I don't.

I think he's right, that it does look more like me. It feels more like me, at least.

But I don't want to publish it on my blog either.

Rosie Is Boring, Unfunny

I haven't been blogging much because I'm trying to maintain the illusion (here, at least) that I am a hilarious and fascinating individual. I haven't been blogging much because I have gone up a cup size since starting on the pill and and my bouncing B cup bosoms now get in the way of my keyboard. I haven't been blogging much because my human feed reader resolved not to read any more bad blogs so I've started reading some of them myself because I sometimes miss the sad thrill of sneering at shit grammar, but it's gone too far and they've put me off blogging.

I'm small like that. Other than my ears, it's the only small thing about me. My arse, for example, is as ample as my ego, which has kept me from blogging too.

The Apologist

I have the most passive aggressive of bad habits: a penchant for apology. I am constantly sorrying out of me. Would that I wore a cap! I could wring it remorsefully.

It's not that I've an awful lot to atone for. Well, I do, but that's beside the point. I've plenty of cause for contrition that I don't necessarily admit to. Breakages, and the like. Hearts, wind and crockery. But I dole out my sorries like sweeties for the stupidest of reasons. I do it because I want some in return. The slightest of slights sees me falling over myself, fawning over whoever has caused me to smart. It doesn't have to be much. I'm a sensitive soul. I go out on a limb for folk, sometimes all four limbs. Three points of contact? Pah. I'm poised for a fall. An idiot optimist, I am constantly dismayed when people don't always respond in kind. People are kind, I find, just not always thoughtful.

And so I apologise to them. My ego convinces me that I am leading by example, that this is a surefire way to elicit some reciprocal remorse. It's not a tactic that has served me well. I'm an insistent idiot optimist, you see, so inevitably (for peace and pity's sake) my apology will be accepted.

Which is not what I wanted at all.

So passive am I in my apologetic aggression that I work myself into right snots. For one who prides herself on her emotional intelligence, it's a spectacularly stupid habit. I can't even claim to have been clever enough to have self-diagnosed this dickheadery, it was instead pointed out to me by my admirably brave boyfriend.

What a frustrating pleasure, to have met my match in a man who has my measure.

Caught By Defuzz

I was blessedly ronnie-free until relatively recently. I spent ten years on Dianette as a result of my having polystyrene ovaries and so never had to worry about facial hair, so bursting was I with ingested womanly hormones. I was fat, mental and darkly depressed, sure, but sublimely smooth of skin.

Yes, until relatively recently. Some three years ago I began to wonder if my chubby crackedness could be blamed on the meds rather than my gen for chocolate and high drama, so I sought alternative treatment. In the hope that I might some day be able to have babies, and the like. Though I haven't dropped any sprogs just yet, I now sport the merest hint of a mustache and a pair of peachy soft sideburns. I'm told you wouldn't notice them, but then he also tells me that I look beautiful in the morning, when I know fucking well that I look like Wurzel Gummidge after a bottle of cooking rum when I wake.

It's been bugging me, though, and now that I'm shaving my legs and waxing my ladygarden in an effort to appear kempt and tempt his affections, I decided it might be time to tackle the 'tache. Depliation seemed wiser than epilation what with my delicate skin, so I came home this evening and slathered my mush in Boots' finest no-more-mo' cream. Timed the four minutes carefully, washed it off to reveal slightly reddened skin and luxurious swathes of sideburn still stubbornly clinging to my rosie cheeks.

Rinse, I did. And repeated. Four minutes later I washed it off again, this time revealing the makings of a rash. Not all over, just where the 'tache and sideys had been. A nice dead giveaway. With a bit of luck the makeup I put on to try to hide it in the morning will cake to the cankers and my glamorous new look will be complete.

It ain't easy, being this sexy.

It's Not Off The Ground I Licked It

It was Thursday evening. Jelly, I thought. I haven't had jelly in years. I rooted around at the back of the cupboard and found two packets of raspberry jelly. That'll do. And fruit. All I could find was pineapple, and tinned pineapple at that. Does raspberry go with pineapple? Probably not.

I wanted a good set, so I put both packets in. Remembering how frustrating it was as a child when the lumps refused to dissolve, I took the kitchen scissors to the slippery blocks and cut them into slimy little nubbles before adding the boiling water. Andrew used to eat bars of jelly as a kid, instead of chocolate. I thought he was disgusting. I popped a square of it into my mouth. It was disgusting.

I chopped the pineapple rings into raggedy chunks and spooned them into the warm jelly. They smelled of tin, not coconut, like fresh pineapple does. I don't like fresh coconut much, but fresh pineapple smells like furze and tastes like sunshine. Tinned pineapple smells sad, and tastes a little bit lonely.

They floated. I hadn't expected that, and for some reason I found it horribly disappointing. Perverse, really, as floaters are generally more exciting than foodstuffs which sink. I think it was at that point that I realised I wouldn't be able to eat it until the morning, and that I didn't really want to eat it anyway. How depressing.

It was a ridiculous episode, and alarmingly typical. I don't know where I get these notions or why I feel a compulsion to tell you about them.

I had a bowl of jelly for afters in Nana's on Sunday evening. Somewhere along our conversational meander she mentioned that she'd had a cup of Oxo the evening before. I asked her if she meant Bovril (which is also mankygank) but no, she meant Oxo. She dissolved cubes of beef stock in hot water and drank it. "Funny" she said, "I didn't enjoy it". I'm not fucking surprised. We're not that different, my nana and I.

Mind The Gap

The train was filling up. Praiseach de phótairí strewn about the carriage, spreading legs and luggage across the seats in an effort to secure some space for their hangovers. Morning-after-the-night-before gaeilgeoirí. The worst kind.

She blustered onto the train at Mala, and the other passengers averted their eyes. Mine, however, were fucking glued to her. Mad, brassy burgundy coloured hair, denim jeans and a fringed denim jacket, she was all rhinestones and righteousness, looking about her like she wanted to batter the face off the next one who looked crooked at her. So I swept my handbag into a cuddle on my lap and nodded at the seat beside me. She looked grateful, and a little like she might bite me. Once she'd settled, the natter kicked off; each episode illustrated with photos from her camera phone. I'm pretty intimately acquainted with her domestic situation at this stage, everything from her ma's fibroids to her dog's gluecoma. He has a good heart though, she tells me, so he'll live for ages with it. He just keeps walking into things. I know people just like that, I tell her. She makes me smile all the way to Thurles, this pavee lackeen, and leaves me with a hug and a thank you. For what? I asked her. Nothing, she laughed, and she barrelled back out through the carriage with the same fonn troda on her that she had when she stomped in.

I think I fell a little in love with her.

As the train pulls away from Thurles we pass acres of flooded farmland. There are sheep standing in grumpy little clusters atop the hillocks that punctuate the dreary landscape. A pair of swans glide majestically across the submerged pastures, looking for all the world like they own the place. I stretch out and slip my headphones on, pleased that for the next two hours I can idle in daydreams. There are no more stops until Heuston, so I cast my thoughts adrift again to paddle across the sodden plains. More swan than sheep.

What The Fuck Is Video Art?

Last night saw me in The Joinery up on Arbour Hill, pretending to be cool and wishing to fuck that I was wearing a black poloneck and a mullet instead of curls and a pink satin alice band. I never know what to do at art exhibitions, particularly avant-garde ones. This is in part because I'm not actually sure what avant-garde means, other than it generally applies to stuff my nana wouldn't like.

But it's all about leaving your comfort zone, right? "They have Alsatians here!" exclaimed my brother as we darted nervously through the traffic in Stoneybatter. Presumably it's all poodles and pomeranians in Monkstown.

Having trailed across the city from Grand Canal Street, we loitered outside the gallery, finishing our cigarettes. Smoking makes us look cool. I lack the manual dexterity to smoke roll ups, so instead I smoke expensive and pretentious slims called Vogue. My cool factor would increase exponentially if I could roll, I reckon, but for now I'll just feign it fashionably in the dim light.

Through the window I can see a huge screen, lots of distressing white and flashing images, tracked by the sound of a baby squalling, a high pitched, insistent cry that makes you want to comfort it, or smother it with a pillow. I think abstract and artful* thoughts to myself as I pull on my cigarette, mulling over what this piece says to me about the human condition (and my mothering instincts). A lady comes barreling out the door with the screaming child in a buggy and I realise that unless we're looking at performance art, I have been talking through my hole.

The piece is called Babel, it transpires, and is an apocalyptic (video) postcard to a technohead with a minuscule attention span. Perhaps it is about me after all. After some earnest posturing in front of the various video installations (there are headphones dangling from the ceiling... should I just hold them to my ear, DJ style, like I'm not that bovvered? Or hog them and stand engrossed, pretending to get it now that I can hear the images?) I move into the second room where I am delighted to discover some bona fide performance art in the form of Julian Longchamp and the Apostroph' Ensemble's Somnambule. This time I do stand, engrossed and pretending to get it while a trio of musicians hide behind a sheet, playing an atmospheric soundtrack to a surreal film. When the piece ends (I know it was the end, because there were credits) the uncomfortably close crowd give an uncomfortably restrained clap. I didn't start it, reigning in my compulsion to applaud their performance for fear it might be uncool, but I joined in with faux ennui. Clap clap, yes, very good. All the while thinking I must pick up one of those sheets on the way out so that I sound like I know what I'm talking about when I write this up on my blog. So that people will think I'm cool.

I'm not. So this evening I reverted to form; dispensed with the poseuring and stuck with what I know. Chilli, mostly. Piquante, with parmesan, grated love, honest warmth and hugs.

*You're right, I don't understand what artful means either.

Suggest Your Own Title

The middle-aged lady at the Tesco till gives me a friendly smile and an approving nod as she scans through my soon-to-be purchases. Potatoes, milk, strawberries and a tube of KY. Now there, she thinks, is a single girl who knows how to look after herself.

Pineapple Head

I dressed with careless abandon this morning. Pulled on my blue stripey t-shirt, the one with the scribbled cartoon and hurry up! break time is coming!! written in a childish scrawl across the front, which makes my colleagues laugh. Black jeans scraped from the bedroom floor; they flatter my arse and say shimmy on the label. This morning it reads like a request. Then my flowery runners, which squeak with every step. On paranoid days I blush, convinced that everyone must think I have horribly sweaty feet. Why on earth I wouldn't just assume that everyone thinks I have squeaky runners is anyone's guess, and a psychiatrist's wet and sticky dream. I leave my hair in a wet, messy tousle and my face sleepy-eyed and apple-cheeked.

I was going to dress with careful deliberation today, straighten my hair and paint on a pretty face. I was going to sit down to a courteous conversation that I'd rather not have. But I look prettier when I smile with flushed cheeks and freckles than I do when I have a powdered nose and runny mascara. My life is too short for that shite.

I saunter into work. There may even have been a shimmy to my shake - showing some spine feels good this morning. I listen to Crowded House because you can't pretend to be cool all of the time. When the lights change at Charlemont Bridge I curb my urge to sit down on the kerb. It's one thing to be feeling easy in the morning sunshine, it's quite another to share your contentedness to wait for the little green man to the point where other commuters are looking at you with naked concern. Je suis bien dans ma peau et ma tête, I think, pretentiously and in French. Because I do feel good in my skin this morning, more so than I have done in a while.

This ain't no sea-change, I think. Not yet, anyway. But I had tired of the tempestuous puddle I'd chosen to paddle in.

One Monday In October

I walked today, the usual half hour into work. A beautiful cold October morning, with wintry sun and familiar faces along the route. I kept my headphones on, managed a wave across the water, a conas tá? at the traffic lights.

I walked again after lunch, from Mountjoy Square back to Rathmines. I could have gotten a taxi but I didn't want to make smalltalk with the driver. Even walked as far as the river and hopped on a bus, but the thoughts of smiling and stating my fare to the tiománaí, perhaps having to share a seat, were too much. So I walked the 5 kilometres. I was wearing my boots, my soft black leather boots that have seen me through three cold and wet winters in Dublin, that have never so much as blistered my heel, that go with nothing but that I wear with everything. By the time I reached Gardiner Street, the scratch I had felt at my heel on the walk from Love Lane this morning had opened. But I walked on. And then after a few hours of sitting at my desk, going through the motions, I walked my half hour home again.

I sat on the edge of my bed, unzipped my boots and peeled off my tights. There is a bloodied scrape on the back of my ankle. The soft, paper-thin flesh that covers the bone just above my heel is ragged and torn. So I climb under the blankets. The sitting room is in disarray, the painters are in and the furniture is piled high in the centre of the room. I go to bed, because right now I feel like I have nowhere else to go. I open my laptop, because right now I feel like I have nobody else to talk to, at least nobody that I can talk to that will not want to make me feel better. And I do not want to be made feel better. I know what I want, and I am biting back a blind and irrational panic that it may be something I cannot have. Something I do not, for so many reasons, deserve.

I wonder at my persistence. At my willingness to fight. At my wearied determination to hurt myself by holding out for the things I long for most, for the things my senseless soul has decided I need to be happy. I write this, and wonder if in time I will read it again and feel embarrassed by it. I remember a quote - do not worry too much about the indiscretion, foolishness or banality of what you write. Leave Time to take care of it all - and decide to publish it anyway. I wonder then if time has ever done me any favours, or ever will. I tinker with the idea of turning the comments off, and decide that blithe responses to well-meaning comments will be easier than heartfelt ones to personal emails.

Final Boarding Call

Dublin Airport must surely be one of the worst places on earth to endure with a hangover. Everyone there seems overexcited or just plain anxious, Hustle is running around, tripping over suitcases and dragging Bustle by the hand. I am struggling to muster the energy to breathe.

I go to the bathroom, too dehydrated to have any need of it but seeking some sanctuary regardless. My reflection shocks me - I am barelegged, and too pale. Underneath my glasses I look like I have been crying.

I feel like I might yet.

I make my way up to the departures lounge and visit the pharmacy there for eye drops and Lucozade. The cashier looks disapprovingly at my mirrored shades and then reminds me that I will need to finish the 'zade before I go through security. Fuck. I think about going back to the fridge and choosing one of the smaller bottles, but thirst and thrift win out - this one has 25% extra free.

I crack the bottle's seal as my troubled thoughts and I glide back down the escalator. And drink deep, they will not take it from me.

Only then do I remember that I'm not flying anywhere today.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Our new office space is something of a luxury in the Public Service (which, I am told, is very different to the Civil Service). Colleagues in other departments ask politely which building I'm located in and then affect mock snobbery, trying to disguise the fact that they are desperately jealous of my surroundings, which they imagine include potted plants, flatscreen monitors, a lift and a butler. There is all but. There is air conditioning and carpet, open plan office space and accountability. And there is state-of-the-art security, presumably in case there should be a rash of stationary thefts along the Lower Wrathmines Road. So we need to wave little fobs for the doors to open, which is about as state-of-the-art as your average public service employee can be expected to cope with. One of my coworkers has already run his over with his Mercedes, I myself was amazed to see another of my colleagues waving her handbag in front of what I am reliably informed is called "the reader" (but which, for clarity's sake, I shall call "the little box thing on the wall beside the door that you wave your fob in front of"). She left my Luddite brain dazzled by the devilish magjick for the merest of moments before laughing in my face and showing me the fob inside. Worryingly, I was still impressed.

They've never switched the little box thing on the wall beside the door that you wave your fob in front of on down at reception though. I can only assume that this is in deference to my humour in the mornings - I am grumpatron until half past teabreak and niggly little annoyances like having to root out a fob from the arsehole of my handbag because I can't manage the fob-in-the-bag magjick that the others can are best avoided until I've had some tea. But this morning, for the fourth morning in a row this week, I slumped defeated against it, a one-woman pileup. They've switched it on, after a year and a half.

The temptation, of course, is to see this in much the same way as I do my tupperware cupboard. As a crude and cruel metaphor for my life.

Reader's Choice #5

Statuesque

For Pinkie, who probably expected something else.

Aspiration
Rowan Gillespie, 1995

As I turned down Love Lane this evening, I looked up to her. I usually do. Like Gillespie's lovers who never quite kiss, her title strikes me as cruel.

Aspiration.

For what can she aspire to but this?

Lithe and strong as her body may be, she'll never progress beyond her precarious cling. Never reach her fingertips over the edge of that flat roof, never raise her arms in relief, or triumph, and turn her face to watch the sun set over the city. She must be tired, I think, and lonely.

It was only when I looked for a photo of The Kiss for that post last April that I discovered her name, and began to think of her as tragic. Up to that point she had reminded me of Kiki Smith's Lillith, who I had seen in IMMA when I was studying art at school, and who had made an indelible impression on me as a 17 year old girl. Both women are sculpted in bronze and climbing the walls, but there their similarities end. Lillith is all that we fear, the dark female, a succubus. She leads us astray, serves her own needs and teases with lustful dreams.

Poor Aspiration does not dream, and is teased by impossibility. She can only hope.

Meet David Sedaris

We sat fidgeting in our assigned seats ("sit there" growled the attendant) avoiding the glare of the furious harridan who had been keeping them for her friends. We turned to watch David Sedaris instead as he made his way along the front row, shaking hands, signing books, smiling. "I don't want to meet him" muttered my BGF, and under the circumstances I was inclined to agree. The room was too bright, we were too sober, we had no books for him to sign and no sparkling wit with which to dazzle him. So we sat and snarked affectionately at one another, and we waited for the show to begin.

And we waited.

When I looked to the front again Sedaris was halfway down the third row. Everyone else in the audience seemed to be clutching one of his books, some enthusiasticators were clutching several of the fucking things. The lonely ones were reading them. The BGF scrabbled in his pocket for his ticket, and reread it carefully. "Meet David Sedaris, it says" he pointed out, somewhat redundantly. "What if this is it? What if this is all there is?" There was a note of panic in his tone. I laughed dismissively, then paused for thought. Sedaris was now just one row from ours, and the show was billed to start a half hour ago. It's not that I feared that I might be denied some earth-shattering performance; I had, after all, paid to see a man read out loud and perhaps answer a question or two. But if I had indeed misread the €12 invitation, then this was going to be very uncomfortable.

In an effort to maintain his cool in the face of impending awkward social interaction, the BGF had produced some heavy hardback tomes from the library and was attempting to educate me on matters of science. I was feigning interest, leaning over and pretending to be absorbed in the book to such a degree that I may have even followed some of the words with my finger. I glanced upwards and noticed that Sedaris had reached our row, and seemed to be inching his way along, smiling and scrawling witticisms on the proffered books. Seeing this, the BGF snapped the book shut and slid it under his jacket, nearly taking my finger with it. "Fuck" I hissed; the sudden movement had drawn Sedaris' eye and now we looked like we were up to something. Cue eye aversion so comically exaggerated that we may as well have started to whistle as we feigned fey nonchalance. Thankfully the Waterstones gonk who'd been hanging out of Sedaris' shirt-tails suddenly decided that it was (show)time and steered the author towards the podium, saving us from making even bigger tits of ourselves.

Later, I tried to think of what I might have said to him. What I might have asked him had I been lucky enough to shake his hand before he took to the podium, or confident enough to raise my own hand when he invited questions from the floor.

Mr. Sedaris, what advice would you give to a 27 year old girl who wants to be you when she grows up?

Eyes Wide Shut

Visit Annie for another.

I Am A Heinous Bitch

So, Andrew wants to know why I don't like blogrolls. I left a comment over at his saying as much,after he tipped his hat at Darragh Doyle's AA style open invite to bloggers to state their name and occupations. Andrew has promised to buy me a Toblerone, so for the moment Andrew gets what Andrew wants. I have a terrible weakness for airport confectionery.

Oftentimes I think that I am not a very good blogger. I've broken a cardinal rule in doing away with my blogroll, after an unsatisfactory attempt to make an honest list of it. I think of those links in terms of endorsements; I read this and I think it's super so you should read it too. But mine inevitably became political and I found myself linking to blogs out of a misplaced sense of obligation, or gratitude, or confused cynicism. Linking to some that I thought would make me look clever. Leaving out others, my guilty pleasures - the blogroll equivalent of a Dido album. I stuffed a couple of the widely-read blogs in there in the hope I might earn a link back. I commented on posts elsewhere just because they would guarantee me a mess of curious traffic. I felt sullied when so few of those who strayed stayed.

So I am trying to be a bit truer to mine own self with my blog, at the expense of staying true to the accepted (if not quite set in stone) principles of blogging. I try to keep external links to a minimum - my blog is not Wikifuckingpedia and you all know how to use your googlemachines. You're well able to look shit up, it would be patronising of me to spoonfeed you with definitions. I try to keep from unnecessarily referencing my own posts; I find it unbecoming. I will not link to other blogs just to draw traffic; if I link it will be out of deference to the author for something they have said, done or written. I will not keep a blogroll because I cannot trust myself to maintain one; I am too concerned with trying not to offend people with my sins of omission, and I am too concerned with my image to keep anything there that I think might show me in a poor light. That's the ugly truth of it - it is a heady mess of manners and ego that has me reluctant to play the game.

I'm the same with dancing. Rhythmically dyslexic, I feeling like a big, uncoordinated, unsexy lump on the dancefloor. But play the right song and I own the motherfucker.

So I think of my Rosie Loves button in the sidebar as my choice choons. I thought about sharing the feeds I subscribe to, but that would be filling the floor with a party mix rather than playing something I think you'd like to dance to. There are blogs in my reader where the content is so inconsistent that I have subscribed and unsubscribed to them umpteen times - I'm not sure if this indicates the patience of Job or ADHD on my part. Rather than test your patience too, I'll link to posts I like. There are other blogs in my reader that I don't care for at all but I feel I should at least skim their surfaces once in a while; whether I like it or not, the Irish blogosphere is a small place and it pays to have some idea of what the neighbours are up to (feed readers make for excellent net curtains). I keep a folder named "Not Dead, Just Sleeping" which I have littered with abandoned blogs. I have an orgy of sex blogs (good, bad and ugly) that I read for research purposes. *cough* I think you're better off for me not sharing all of these with you in the sidebar.

My understanding of blogging's communities, civilities and courtesies is growing. And while I think of myself neither as a bitter cunt or a belligerent contrarian, I didn't like Darragh's post because for me, blogging is not about the readers. I don't like that people feel the need to advertise their blogs, to shout for attention. I went through an unhealthy phase of thinking my blog was valid only if (lots of) people read it, if they commented, if they loved it (for "it" read "me"). I spent more time poring over Statcounter than I did writing posts and I lost sight of why I wanted to keep a blog in the first place. I am happy enough to make some aspects of this blogosphere's etiquette my own, and disregard the rest.

Because that is what I do.

Safe Keeping

Sometimes I save up all of the nice things that someone has said to me so that I can savour them as I walk to work. Especially on rainy days. This morning the sun tickled the banks of the grand canal, and people smiled. As Boc Maxima flooded my ears, I peeled off my rain mac to give my freckles an airing and cracked open my safe of warm fuzzies anyway. There's no need to keep these ones for a dark, dank day.

Hell Freezes Over

The Swede wandered into the kitchen to find me ankle deep in puddles and tits deep in tantrum, the floor destroyed and the contents of the fridge laid out unappetisingly over every surface in the flat. It was 5pm on a Saturday evening, and I was defrosting the freezer.

"Are we feeling guilty for something?" he asked with a lewd wink, presumably referring to my propensity for men and mayhem as opposed to mundane housework. "No" I snapped, all set to berate him for not noticing the cleaning I do around the place and then biting my tongue as I realised it's generally limited to my own bathroom. He laughed at my temper and reminded me that he'd done it last time (a year and a half ago) before setting down to watch The Simpsons. I recommenced hacking at the solid ice with my makeshift pick (a bottle opener) and boiled the kettle for the 47th time, huffing and muttering direly to myself. Because in truth I was feeling guilty. Not because the Swede does all the work around here (he doesn't) but because I had spent all morning and most of the rainy afternoon luxuriating in the easy company of a new beau. And I'm just not used to things being that easy. The irrational idiot in me feels undeserving and sits eating her hair, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She shouldn't. I'm prettier than I let on. I'm smarter than the evidence would suggest. I need to learn to accept good fortune with good grace, and stop peeling the silver linings off my clouds.

4 bath towels, 8 tea towels, two scalds and several floods later I gave up, and went to meet Annie for a pint. She was appalled at the idea of me spending Saturday night standing on a chair with my head in the fridge, thought it very un-Rosie. But it's very me. Swings and roundabouts, rock and roll. Tuesdays are dreary enough without housework - there's no better time to do it than on a Saturday night when you're still basking in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's glow. I arrived home in a pleasant fuzz of wine, well-being and patatas bravas and made straight for ground zero to inspect my handiwork. The ice was melting; coming away in satisfying, weighty chunks.

The Most Important Decision I Have To Make Today

(as I've already chosen an "outfit")

Curly or straight?