On the Beauty of Showers

Sometimes a person just needs a shower.  Maybe you need a nice long shower because your family can get on your nerves but they can't follow you in the shower.  Or maybe it's because warm water just makes everything better.  Or maybe it's really just that you feel antsy because you really desperately need to feel clean.

Whatever, the reason, sometimes you just need a shower.  It refreshes you, cleans you and somehow freshens your mind and attitude.  Sometimes, after a long day of gardening, being slobbered on by dogs and arguing with your family you just need to hop in the shower and clean yourself off and start all over.

It's remarkable how many ailments can be cured by a shower.

• Headaches - cured
• That crawly feeling you get if you saw a spider too close to you but can't see it anymore - cured
• Dry eyes- cured
• The feeling of being encased in slime after a particularly slobbery dog kiss - cured
• Dry cough - cured (well at least temporarily) 
• The "my hands will never be the same again" because I've been gardening all day feeling - cured
• If you have a cold and your head is stuffed up - temporary cure
• The "ugh I'm disgusting I can't go anywhere" feeling induced by dirt and dirty hair - cured
• Exhaustion - cured (at least long enough to make and consume dinner before slowly melting into bed)
• "I just got a haircut" itchiness - cured
• Early morning "I hate the world because it's too early" syndrome - almost cured (and that's saying something)
• Exercising is the worst thing ever I'll never do it again feeling - cured (again impressive)
• The sand and salt from my beach trip is weighing me down feeling - cured
• Feeling too cold - cured
• Muscle soreness - cured
• The feeling of being encrusted with a sparkly skin disease a.k.a. glitter - cured
• The "I'm too old for this ****" feeling - cured

Ok, so they aren't really a list of ailments.  But look at how many feelings that masquerade as ailments can be cured by a simple shower.  Really, showers might be the best. 

Ok, lauding of showers complete.  I'm going to go take one and cure my malaise.  

The Case of the Stranger at the Door and the Cowardly Cat

It was early, at least by my standards. Ok, fine, I admit it wasn't early. It was a little after eleven when I heard a loud knock at the door. It had to be loud for me to hear it because I was sound asleep at the time.

I had stayed up late reading and between seven and nine in the morning my cat had tried everything she could think of to make me get up.  She didn't need anything of course, she just enjoys an audience while she eats.  I, however, refuse to wake up so that she may dine a la russe.  So, I tried my best to ignore her and finally, after a two hour battle, (that involved her devilish tricks and muttered curses from my pillow) I convinced her to curl up at the end of the bed and sleep.

I don't know what you're talking about.  I'm totally innocent and all my desires are needs.

So, that's where the two of us were at eleven in the morning, both completely contented and asleep, when someone pounded at the door with enough force to startle us awake and get the blood going.  She looked about wildly while I checked the time.  Mother should still be at Bible study.  Perhaps it was a neighbor, but it was rather loud, much too loud for one of our friendly neighbors.  Wouldn't it be just my luck if the "bad guys" had come calling this morning I thought groggily.  No, it must just be someone here about the bathroom construction.  Maybe they have a quote for the house paint or the window.

I tore myself from my cozy bed to peer out the window and decide if I could reasonably ignore the person at the door or not.  I couldn't see anyone downstairs by the door and thought they'd given up and gone back to their car.  When I tiptoed to another window for a better view of the driveway and their little car I thought I heard another knock.  Clearly, with a normal little four door car instead of a truck this wasn't a construction person, and yet they didn't seem to be leaving either.

I put the nearest coat on over my pjs and resigned myself to greeting whatever neighbor or friend believed that eleven am wasn't too early for a social call.  They would be wrong about this of course, but there is just no stopping some people.  On the way down the stairs I called over my shoulder to the cat, asking if she was coming, since my presence downstairs had been her only goal for two hours that morning.  She was tiptoeing behind me.  That's odd I thought, still half asleep, normally she races down the stairs with me.  Then as I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard a sound that almost made my heart stop.

Who me?  I'm certainly not a coward and I wasn't tiptoeing either.  I was clearly stalking the criminal.  Yes, that's what I was doing two feet behind you.

I had heard this sound before, years earlier when we had a different cat.  Some said she was a devious cat.  I just said she was the devil.  She would wait until I was alone doing work in the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed.  Then, and only then, would she approach the door from the outside, reach up, and jiggle the doorknob.  It scared me half to death every time she did it and she seemed to know that.  This time the noise was a little louder, but I knew without a doubt that the person who had knocked a few minutes ago was now jiggling the doorknob.  They were trying to get into my house!

I was afraid in that moment.  They clearly didn't know I was home as they had knocked to see if anyone answered and waited some time before trying the door.  I had taken my sweet time to decide if I could ignore them or not.  They had assumed nobody was home and were now trying to get in.  But subconsciously this thought kept my terror in check because I knew they were not trying to hurt me.

There was the briefest of pauses and then I heard the door give.  I knew that they had just shouldered my door open by force, and I had just heard the door jamb break.  The knocker was now inside my kitchen.

There was no doubt as to their intention now.  Thinking the house was empty the would be criminal intended to rob the place.  And yet the moment I heard the door give in I stopped being afraid and I stopped thinking.  I knew they were in my house and I knew with a ferocious certainty that I had to get them out.  I flew around the last corner with rage at their intrusion building in my chest and I shouted at the top of my lungs "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!".

Did she say intruder? Hide!

The intruder was a young man standing about my height (so not very tall) just on the kitchen rug, all of two feet inside my house, his eyes wide with shock as I came running at him, pj's flying, bed hair flying, with rage in my voice.  He immediately turned and with an "oh shit!" ran out of my kitchen and headed for his car.  As I reached my door I shouted "Get out of my house!" one more time before chasing after him across the porch.  He got safely in his car and began to leave before I could catch up to him, which is just as well because I don't know what I would have done with him if I had caught him.  Still full of adrenaline and rage I memorized his license plate numbers as he pulled away picking up hasty speed around my driveway and left my house.

Then I stood there as the adrenaline let-down started to make me shake and the shock of what might have happened set in.  I called mom to let her know I was safe but she insisted on leaving Bible study right away to come home.  The older ladies in the Bible study group were shocked and terrified that I would chase an intruder.  So worried in fact, that one of them drove by the house later to check on us and make sure we were ok because she couldn't get over the idea of me chasing out a robber.  I'm now infamous at church as the "battle daughter," my mother's new term for me, who chased away an intruder.

She is only fierce when she's pretending to be a lioness.

The next thing that had to be done was to call 911 to report the break in.  This led to a long morning of police statements and the dusting of our doorknob for prints.  The police officers were all very kind and offered suggestions and advice for home safety and personal safety.  None of these involved me chasing after criminals in the future I might add.  They assured me that the best thing to do was to trust my instincts.  If you think it's a "bad guy" then call 911 right away.  Don't wait til they break in and don't chase them.

And they are right of course.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be aware of the potential repercussions of my actions.  I was lucky.  In future I'll be pleased to call in support before I need it.  It's far better to let the police chase away the intruders for me so I can stand aloof in the background with my cat while we wear identical expressions of dignified abhorrence.

And despite all my light-hearted joking about the matter, I am serious.  I know I have a rich imagination (evidence found here), but unfortunately this really happened.  My hands shook after the fact and it ruined my day.  And it has made me a bit more cautious.  And if it happens to you, do call the police.  I only joke about this because I am safe and it is over; and I think that often the only choice you have in these situations is whether to laugh or cry.  Personally, I refuse to let somebody else make me the victim.  So, I shall laugh at the comical image of my cowardly cat slinking behind me as I chase out a robber in my pj's.  It did ruin my day, but it will not make me subject to fear.  That's no way to live.  Ok, serious side all dealt with, I shall return to my farcical description of real events.

So, let this be a lesson for all people.  Some of us take our beauty sleep very seriously.  If you have the nerve to awaken me, and my fiendish cat, from our slumber I assure you that you will have awakened the sleeping dragon.  And if you are a would be thieving scum bag, the police will be more than happy to escort you to your new home. 

Breaking News: Mugger claims Scurvy made them do it!

Some day it will come to this.  One day I will hardly be able to fend off the scurvy and the madness and I will simply snap.  This will be my headline.  Mugger claims "Scurvy made me do it!"

I can tell you are confused.  That furrowed look on your brow, that raised eyebrow, that slightly narrowed eye tell all.  You cannot understand what I am talking about.  Well how could you?  YOU do not have scurvy.

At first I just thought I was tired from working too hard and maybe the tiniest bit lazy.  But then I realized the terrible truth.  I was in line to buy my handful of bargains at M&S when realization struck.  Out of all the things I could have selected to buy I had chosen to buy a lemon cake, a lemon mousse and a grapefruit.  I wasn't just tired and lazy.  I was craving fruit.  I had scurvy!  The hard yellow evidence was staring me straight in my scorbutic face.

Maybe the presence of this pirate cake alongside my lemon cake subconsciously started this whole thing? Nah, it was the scurvy.  Had to be.

Scorbutic, that's just such a great word.  No, focus Madder Hatter, you must stay focused.  Don't let the scurvy take you like this.

Ok, produce wallet, produce change, pay for citrusy products.  Almost safe.  No, the madness is taking over.  The scurvy... It. Is. Too. Powerful.

I stumbled back to my desk at work, delirious with laughter and the sickness.  I managed to obtain a spoon somehow in this state, peeled back the lid with trembling fingers and dug into the lemony mousse.  Ahhh.  The cure.  I could feel the sugary lemony goodness fixing me.  The madness slowly receded to a normal level and I went back to my work.  I had been saved from the scurvy, but not before I had realized my fate.

You see, it seems to be my fate to constantly battle scurvy.  I do not eat enough broccoli obviously, as I have explained before here.  So it is with a heavy heart that I must realize what my eventual fate will be.  I am destined to battle with scurvy my entire life.  Yes, tragic, but true.

I will not always be so lucky as to be within reach of a cure, however.  So, I am doomed to be the madman on the loose grasping at anything that even looks like a cure.

Mad with the scurvy I will scuttle down the street.  Nobody sitting at a quiet breakfast with grapefruit will be safe from my ravenous need for citrus.  I will be forced to grab lemony desserts from people's hands and down them without elegance or dignity.  Scorbutic hands trembling I am doomed to terrify the lone bearers of fruit flavoured cakes on public transportation.

With wild and anxious aspect I will spy the cakes from a distance, perched prettily on the lap of an unsuspecting bus passenger.  My desperate deficiency heightening my senses and screaming that I act now to restore my health, I will leap to my feet and race to my supposed salvation.  Muttering in demented demeanor aloud to myself about the scurvy I will pitch back and forth with the motion of the bus.  The scurvy will feel the motion, reach back into its ancient memory and believe with renewed audacity that it is afflicting a hapless sailor, demanding satisfaction in a fruit flavoured cake sacrifice to its honour.

I will battle with the scurvy.  I am a good person and won't want to take the poor passenger's cake.  But the scurvy will be strong and I will eventually be forced to steal their cake.  Unceremoniously, I will be found tearing into it to relieve my scurvy and become the world's weirdest and wildest mugger.  Stealing cakes from innocent people.  Once the scurvy has been sated and my sanity has returned to me it will be too late.  I will try to explain that the scurvy made me do it as I am led away in handcuffs for mugging some poor old lady bringing a lemon cake to her friends birthday.  But it will be too late she will already be terrified and traumatized by my public scorbutic debacle.

I am doomed.  Summer days may find me trying to pry orange popsicles from unsuspecting little fingers.  Fingers that will point me out as the orange-handed culprit.  Sure, sure I could have asked where they got their popsicles from, but scurvy doesn't heed logic.  Scurvy does not brook disappointment.  Scurvy is a law unto itself.  It is a bleak bleak future that awaits me.

Even if I try to stockpile on citrus products there is no telling when scurvy could strike.  I could be anywhere and nobody will be safe from my scorbutic mania.  Maybe I should get a lawyer.  Perhaps a good lawyer could explain that these innocent victims had knowledge of the whereabouts of the popsicle and cake vendors and that they were withholding that information from me.  I was forced to steal the popsicles and cakes out of great underprivileged need.

Or insanity.  The insanity plea could work.  The terrified lady from the bus could probably testify on my behalf even.  Insanity may just be my salvation. 

It's nearly H-Hour and I'm frazzled

A mere handful of hours away from the commencement of my operation, operation debug, found me head in hands slumped against a wall and soaked in tears.  I had hit a low point literally and emotionally.  I was painfully aware of the fact that I was only hours away from my own D-Day operation and the stress of the final preparations was almost too much to handle.  But it wasn't the stress that finally broke me.  So what was it that brought me to tears?  And what was this operation?

Two weeks ago on D-8 day (not long before Christmas) our sources informed us of a major problem.  Our defenses had been breached and the enemy had infiltrated our house.  The second story bedroom belonging to my housemate had bedbugs.  The week before we had been alerted to the potential threat of infiltration.  We investigated with caution and could not confirm or deny the breach.  That is when we brought in the expert.  The pesticide man arrived and with a few questions he set about looking into our problem.  Within a matter of minutes we had proof that our security had indeed been breached in a most serious manner.  The enemy had made great inroads deep into our territory and had established itself quietly while we were busy fighting other battles.  By the time we realized that we had a problem the enemy had already established a large enough presence to show itself boldly.

What to do next?  Since the bedbugs had surprise on their side we hardly knew what hit us and the initial days after the assault found us reeling in shock.  In order to minimize casualties my roommate pulled out of the area in order to regroup for the attack.  We knew we had to act fast to repel the invaders and regain our territory.  An emergency war council was called.  We needed to hit hard in order to win.  This was one operation that could not be done in half measures.  The list of preparations seemed endless but we set the D-Day operation for Thursday.  Every room needed to be cleaned from top to bottom.  The items all needed to be removed from drawers and shelves and sealed in plastic bags.  This way contamination was sealed in and when objects were cleaned and placed in fresh plastic bags contamination was sealed out.

Armed with garbage bags (or bin liners as they call them in this soggy land) and cleaning supplies I tackled room after room.  I began in the spare room and threw the odd left-over pillows into bags.  While I had lost my first housemate's help on the first day when she abandoned her room, leaving that front empty, I lost the help of the second housemate to a business trip.  To be fair to business, laziness and a native selfish air would have prevented him from being much help even in the event that he had stayed.  So, it was me and my army of trash bags that lept into the fray.  

In preparation for our D-Day operations I spent less time at the museum and more time in my house cleaning and prepping.  D-7 day passed with cleaning, then D-6 day did the same.  One by one the days flew faster and faster with the mountain of chores seeming to grow rather than dwindle.  I was a hurricane of preparation.  I packed things into bags, made sure pointy edges didn't tear through, tied everything securely and moved onto other items.  I labelled and taped and moved things everywhere.  I scrubbed the floors and the shelves and the drawers.  I emptied and cleaned everything.  I shredded countless old useless bank statements and took loads of rubbish out to the street, including bags of things other people had been too lazy to remove themselves.

So, the night before our D-Day operation was to be launched I was a swirling dervish of mad cleaning activity.  I was running low on supplies, energy and patience.  The enormous roles of trash bags had dwindled to a shockingly small amount left.  I was pushing around some furniture to get at the really hard to clean bits of floor in the narrow part of my room when I ran out of paper towels.  I realized I needed more towels to finish off my corner and that I was running low on time.  I lept to my feet and stood up hard underneath the low hanging eve in that section of my room.  The low slanted ceiling raced downwards to meet my head as I raced up to meet it with astonishing force.

The impact left me stunned and speechless for a few interminable moments, half crouched, half standing under the ceiling at the back of my room.  Then as the pain started to set in I put my hands gingerly to my head and literally sank down the wall.  The pain.  The stress.  The tiredness.  They were all overwhelming and I suddenly found myself in tears and unable to stop crying.  (And I'd already packed the tissues somewhere I couldn't find them.  Great!)  A few moments later I realized that there was nothing I could do but carry on.  Nobody could or would help me and it all needed to be done.  So I picked myself up and carried on.

Over by the paper towels I found a lint roller.  I picked it up to put it away and found that it had no cover and was too sticky to just pack away as is.  Absentmindedly I rolled it back and forth on the edge of the dresser top thinking what to do with it.  It stuck to the dresser and picked up a bit of dust.  Suddenly I had an idea, a wonderful, terrible idea.  I decided to use the lint roller to pick up the dust and dirt in my room.  It wouldn't just push the dust around and leave it in the air.  Everything would stick onto the lint roller and go directly into the bin.  No mess, no fuss, no problem.  At my lowest point I had stumbled onto a bit of an epiphany.

Slowly, with bin liners, cleaning supplies and lint rollers in hand I eliminated all the dust and dirt and bagged all of my possessions.  Clothes, offices supplies and Christmas gifts alike all went into bags.  At six in the morning I was nearly done.  I took a quick nap and then got up to take the last of the trash out and do the final touches.  H-hour was scheduled for 9am.  Just after 9am the pesticide man arrived.  I called a taxi and left him to begin the barrage on the bugs.  It was H-hour and the time for the reckoning.  I left my house feeling a bit like the Grinch who stole Christmas.  I had bagged up everything and was ready to ruin their Christmas as they had tried to ruin mine.

I was ready to be done with the whole thing.  At least I learned the power of a lint roller in cleaning shelves and other dusty surfaces, but nonetheless... Bah-humbug and good riddance!

On a scale of 1 to 10 I'm an Um...

True insanity cannot be measured.  On the light side of things a one is mild insanity.  Then there is intense insanity.  And then there is, well, me, at whatever strange alternate level of insanity it is that I seem to exist in.  I am more of the "Um... okaaaay" type of insanity and I've had another one of those days.

You know how some days you are just too tired to care?  You stayed up late you woke up early?  Your reaction to sunshine and the alarm was not the typical sleepy groan but more of the melodramatic face-plant into the pillow?  Do you know what I'm talking about?  Well, I had one of those days today.  I was not tired enough to be grumpy, just tired enough to make absolutely no sense.

Photo Source: Pinterest

At work I was meant to be updating my client's social media profiles.  I barely know how to update my own.  What makes you think I'm qualified to update a financial client's profiles?  I had to research how to effectively use hashtags on twitter for businesses.  Yes, I do actually have a twitter account but I'm not really sure what to do with it.  I certainly don't know how it's used for business.  And Delicious.  What is the point of that site?  Is it really a directory of links or is it really like twitter?  Do people actually look at your Delicious account or is it more meant as a list for you?  Why is it called Delicious?  There is nothing tasty about it.  I just don't understand. I know nothing about technology and social media.  I really am the world's worst online marketing employee. 

A day of staring at the screen trying to decide if articles were interesting enough to catch attention, but not so interesting as to offend my financial client, sent me further into my strange mood.  Suddenly I was staring at the weirdest abbreviations and I couldn't keep my mind from wandering.  I muttered "SM?" to my computer.  My colleague looked up with a cocked eyebrow and asked "did you say S&M?"  Social media does not abbreviate well it would seem.  We were both tired and this was much funnier than it should have been.  We decided that after a day of work I would clearly be an expert in S&M and loans for my finance client.

Not long after lunch our big boss arrived with two teenage girls and starting filming the boot of his car in the parking lot below.  Well, at least that was what we heard.  There was apparently too much fast driving and some sort of flipping involved as well.  We came up with kidnapping theories and somewhere along the line nearly invented an office rumour that he had two families and was trying to keep them from knowing about each other and this somehow involved a blackmail video filmed from the office of a car boot.  We are still working on it.  We may or may not send round an email on Monday asking the burning question of what on earth they were actually doing.

As the day progressed work got more boring. When you start to read the phrase "pitch craft ideas to x person" as witch craft, and you giggle to yourself, you know you are reaching that stage of tired where everything is funny.  Next writing emails that proposed an article about loans, I asked the blogger if they would be interested in it and even this caused me to giggle inanely to myself.  Interested.  Loans.  Interest.  Hehehe.  Clearly I had not slept enough, I had been at work too long and I had really, truly, gone over the edge.  I was past the point of no return.  Returns... hahahaha.

I'm bored.  Are we done yet?  Photo Source: Flickr by Holster

We decided to count the seconds, not minutes until we were done with work.  This led to the realization that seconds seem so much shorter than minutes and even a great number of them somehow feels short.  But we went further, by the time we arrived in town on the bus at about 6pm there were roughly 2,009,000 seconds left until Christmas. 

We stopped in at Primark, a work friend and I, and found the clothes to be quite exotic.  We found zebra stripes in one row.  And then rounded a corner to find the rest of the zoo.  Every variety of great cat imaginable was there as well as owls, ducks, and dragonflies.  Dragonflies are there to support the ecosystem not necessarily as an attraction, but anyhooo.  We had fun trying on and making fun of everything we could get our hands on.  It's more fun this way.

Eventually we left for food at McDonald's and met some very interesting and slightly overly friendly guys.  They wanted to know how old we thought they were.  It became a big game.  They tried to guess our age and my friend tried to convince them she was 29 with two children.  They didn't believe her and were triumphant when she revealed that she is only 24.  Though they had a hard time believing that I was 26.  They also didn't believe that we worked at a marketing company.  True it has a funny name, but they suggested that we looked like we worked at Nando's instead.  I'm not sure that wasn't an insult.  Ah well.  It was funny to mess with them.

Eeyore wonders why and how it always snows only on him. Photo Source: Flickr by Nikoretro

On our way out and to the train station we started to see snow flakes.  Really large ones, all of a sudden and not in a flurry, just randomly.  It was suspicious.  Turns out it was only snowing on one street of the whole town.  I'm guessing it was a snow making machine and possible marketing ploy?  I don't know but it was odd and we weren't the only two who noticed.  Needless to say it was a strange day.  It was almost surreally funny and strange.  I mean, who has ever heard of it only snowing on one street?  Yeah, I'm going to have to investigate this tomorrow.

For now I'm going to sit indoors all snuggly with some hot chocolate and attempt to return to a state of semi normalcy, you know, mild insanity, and maybe even warm, cozy sleepiness.