Blast from the past, or, i really miss my meds, or, what's the point of staying off meds to try and get pregnant if you then a)don't get pregnant, and, b) revert to being such a crazy that you're not fit to care for the child you already have?

when s and i first started going out, the thing my brain was particularly doing was to do with my flat. i couldn't have anybody in it. for a while before that it had been that i couldn't answer the door or the phone without first knowing who it was. this was not really a problem because my friends knew and would call first - i had caller display on both phones. (unless someone unexpected knocked, like the time my neighbour found my wallet ont he front doorstep because i'd been so drink the night before i hadn't noticed i'd dropped it. they knocked and knocked. i hid first under the bed, then in the bathroom so i'd have something to throw up into.) my landline would not even accept calls from numbers i hadn't told it about. When Maj had a horrid break up she had to stand crying in the rain outside while I got dressed to come out and meet her to go and buy ginger biscuits.

From the day he and i became a couple, we spent nearly every night together but it was about three months before i could invite him to my place.
then i got pregnant and then i moved into his flat. the one he'd rented up the road from me. I still couln't answer the door unless i knew who it was, but i could have friends over. believe it or not i really love having friends over, especially for lunch or dinner. I love cooking for our friends.

It's five years later and my brain has moved on from domestic gatekeeping to other juicy parts of the circus that is the minatie of my daily life.
but this week it has become nostalgic for the days of impenatrable fortress.
S has invited a work colleague and her husband and (for some reason I don't quite understand) her 15 year old sister, and their two puppies (one black lab, one collie, apparently) for lunch on saturday.

I seem to have been crying or breaking things ever since he confirmed they were coming. i've been going over and over what i might cook. how i'll set the table. got rid of soem of our furniture. scrubbed and scrubbed the kitchen tiles which we inherited when we moved in here and i've never liked because they never look clean. last night i made him break off all the horrid peach coloured tiles fromt he wall in our downstairs bathroom and paint the wall. that was after we spent over an hour int he home store becaue i had become fixated on a particular lampshade which , of course turned out to be from a discontinued line but they wouldn't sell me the display model. managers were summoned. we ended up going to a different store and completely rethinking the colour scheme. i went through all the cupboards throwing out plates and bowls and packets of stuff. P is in holiday club tomorrow so i can try to get my shit together.

I failed my driving test for the third time today, even though i've been getting perfect scores on my practice sessions in the past couple of weeks. i can' think about anything else but this lunch. and these people. and their being in the house.

posted by dodo @ 4:09 pm 2 comments

you know how sometimes the ties between you and old friends can start to slacken. a job change. a baby. geography. and how, when you do finally see them, its like there was no gap. like you're still 17 or 25 or 30. and all the times they've crossed your mind since the last meeting feel like an unbroken thread of mutual conversation. And the gaps between emails and phone calls and meetings stretch from months to years.

I've been wondering for a while now why I couldn't find a profile for D on facebook. or, previously, on myspace. I reasoned that maybe he would want to at least flaunt his latest boyfriend photos to the world, regardless of the fact that he was a shameless shameless networker. Writing and producing for TV meant a lot of schmoozing. Even in our mid teens I marvelled at his audacity.

Something on the front page of our local newspaper, about media graduates, really made me think of him today. and over coffee this morning i rang him. the phone number was no good. an email bounced back. his website no longer there. i googled him. pages and pages of credits and work references, but all from older shows.

There was a small obituary in his local paper. Dead from cancer within 6 weeks of diagnosis. His mum was quoted as saying how he carried on working on TV ideas, even in the hospice.

It was four years ago.

posted by dodo @ 2:11 pm 2 comments

Staff at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel have found a three-year-old girl alone in a duty-free shop after her parents accidentally took a plane without her.

The parents boarded the flight to Paris with four of their five children.

The parents did not realise their mistake until the captain of the plane informed them after take-off, according to police.

"It is usual that travellers in a rush forget their luggage but not a child. This never happens," AFP news agency quoted a police official by as saying.

Never ? I'll confess i've been tempted - although, thankfully for all concerned, not in an airport situation, since P loves the business of travel. THis weekend we were in a big DIY/Gardening store, looking for a little table and a couple of chairs for the patio at the back of our house. She's normally a big fan of shopping. trying stuff, comparing this and that. Not this saturday. whining. wanting to be picked up. not content to hold hands but clinging to my leg or round my waist. each time i briefly sat to audition a chair, she was lying across my lap. continually making that noise, that special noise that only your own child can make that is heard uniquely by your ears in order that you reach for the closest metal spike and jam it repeatedly into your temple. that noise.

posted by dodo @ 9:20 am 0 comments