Category: Diary Page 37 of 47

I wake up with a headache, which is a bit of a downer, but I definitely enjoyed the wine that caused it, so I have zero regrets. I’ve arranged to meet one of my Facebook friends for breakfast; our first in-person meeting, and I’m very excited–both for the rare chance to meet someone new, and to try out a new breakfast place. The morning doesn’t quite shift my headache, but it’s a splendid time nonetheless.

I make plans to head home straight afterwards, but a plan to buy some nurofen, and some better-tasting panadol than the clone stuff I have in the cupboard, somehow turns into a mini shopping spree. I walk into JB Hifi, and come out with $50 of blurays (seven films though!). I go into Target, remember that they have a new range of kids Doctor Who t-shirts, which I can fit into, and come out with a shiny new Dalek t-shirt. I browse posters for the kinderbesten, but don’t like the prices (so I order some online for them instead). And, of course, I also get my drugs.

I get home with grand plans to make a Heston Blumenthal roast chicken, and have been brining my chicken in preparation. I pop it in the oven, ready for three-plus hours of slow roasting … and then the power goes out. I quickly transfer it to the hob, sling in some stock and vegetables, and leave it on a low heat instead. Meanwhile I finally go and build the shelves that I actually went to IKEA for in the first place: GNEDBYs, half price in the sale, and ideal for my very slowly expanding collection of blu-rays. As I’m building, the power comes back on. I stick on Rogue One to watch as I work: I have just enough time for it before the kinderbesten return.

When I finally retrieve the chicken from the pot it is so tasty that I consider cooking it that way every time. I then use the leftovers to make some stock and set out to see how many meals I can get out of this one bird.

Sunday ends, as is the tradition, with Doctor Who in the company of my two wonderful kinderbesten.

It’s Saturday. I don’t have the kinderbesten, and I have big plans for the day.

I get up at 7am, well in time to make it to IKEA for 8am opening. I plan to be in and out before it gets hideous. It’s all going extremely well until I miss the exit off the freeway. I’m so used to seeing IKEA looming, in all its blue and yellow glory, that I haven’t even bothered to remember the name of the exit. With some malarkey from Google Maps (mostly due to me misunderstanding which dot on the map actually represents my location) I get to IKEA just after 8am. I consider it a victory.

I go straight to the cafe to claim my $2 breakfast, which actually costs $4.50 because I have coffee too. I have a bit of a browse, almost challenging myself to be tempted by something that’s not on my list. But nothing really jumps out at me. Then, in the kitchen section, I grab a rogue item: three corkboard mats. I’ve finally broken. I’ve strayed from the list. I start to feel the stress building and I decide to get the rest of the things on my list and clear out.

I plan to drop by a friend’s house on the way home. I manage to take the wrong turn out of IKEA. But then I traverse the rest of the route with almost complete success … until I manage to completely drive past her road. Then I spend a ridiculous ten minutes trying to persuade Google Maps to tell me where I am, and where the right road is, and where I can actually park. It all comes together in the end, but a ten-minute journey has taken me half an hour. Totally worth it though: I get to see my friend, and I get to play with kittens.

But then I have to leave as I’ve arranged for Rachel’s Dad to come over and help me replace some taps (I could *probably* do them myself, but I could also almost certainly screw them up myself too). The taps prove far more challenging than they have any right to be, but we claim victory in the end. While that’s all going on, I rebuild my coffee station. It’s basically an IKEA desk that has been placed in an alcove, with a fridge beneath it, and holds all the tea and coffee paraphernalia. I’ve had visions of replacing it with some old IKEA desk components and some fresh wall shelves for years, but haven’t gotten around to it. Until now! It takes a couple of hours, but the result not only doesn’t fall down, but is almost every bit as glorious an improvement as I could have hoped. Instead of a grubby, white desk surface I now have lovely pine-effect shelves. Plus more storage space. And I even bought some LED lights from IKEA to light it up. Unfortunately they’re brighter than a million suns, so I decide to leave them for the time being.

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to spend an evening completely on my own, something that would have filled me with abject fear and trepidation less than a month ago. However, I’ve been feeling so much better over the last few weeks that I finding myself looking forward to it now.

I start off by cooking myself a steak, and it turns out so damn good that I feel tangible guilt at eating it all myself. But I do it anyway. I then build the new lamp I picked up at IKEA today. It’s meant to provide a minimal amount of background lighting for the main room, but again it’s way bright than expected. However, I find a good spot for it behind the sofas where, so long as you don’t stare directly at it, it manages to provide some pleasant ambient lighting.

Then I settle down to watch Arrival, which I bought months ago and was incredibly excited about watching and then … didn’t. It turns out to be not quite the film I was expecting, but equally even more amazing than expected. I go to bed moved and inspired and–for only the third time in however many years–in a completely empty house.

The school week end with Dress Like A Pirate day, and both of the kinderbesten look fantastic. As I have to get to a meeting for 9am, I commission the Elderbeast to do the big brother thing (as opposed to the Big Brother thing) and take charge of getting the Kinderbeast to his class.

I have many meetings at work, alleviated briefly by a colleague bringing in a quantity of Krispy Kremes, but it’s overall a good day. I am hyped that I’ve managed the full five days, and I am also–against all expectations–deliriously excited about my second childfree weekend.

I get home and see Rachel’s car is missing from the drive. I briefly wonder if she’s already taken the kids before I’ve had a chance to say goodbye, but of course she’s merely popped down to the shops. In the end it takes a remarkably long time for everyone to get packed up and out of the house.

I’m planning an early morning trip to IKEA tomorrow, so I head straight to Coles to do my week’s shopping. On a Friday night! Because I can! Without the fussy kinderbesten to feed I’m free to have something a bit special for dinner, so I grab some salmon steaks. I accompany them with a glass of red wine. Also because I can!

Then Seb arrives for Fridate and the weekend is officially started. He helps me move the sofas around in the front room, because I feel like a change. We try at least 16 different arrangements, mostly adjusting the angle of the sofas by a few degrees here and there, until we finally stumble across an arrangement that works–and it really works.

Our hard work for the night concluded, we settle down for our Friday night horror movie. This week: The Howling.

Awesome.

I continue to feel dead tired at work, but I’ve been holding out for Thursday and Friday to arrive: I have dinner with friends tonight, and then Fridate tomorrow, both of which have made the week worth persisting with. I’m also particularly upbeat about the prospect of achieving another five-day week: something which has been a challenge of late, but is starting to feel like less and less of an endurance test.

On the way home I grab some babysitting wine for Beryl along with some desert to take with me (chocolate orange cheesecake, if you were wondering). I go home to get showered, then back out to Macca’s to collect the standard “Daddy’s not cooking dinner tonight” takeout. Along the way the Elderbeast somehow negotiates his way from a small frozen Coke to a large one. One day he will make a great lawyer.

I then spend my evening in the company of two wonderful people, both perfect hosts, who give me lots and lots of good advice for tackling the Elderbeast’s behaviour and providing him with the support he needs. I drive home afterwards, tired but delighted to have such great people in my life, and optimistic that I can find a way to help the Elderbeast before things get too much worse.

I get home and the Elderbeast is still up: apparently he has, in the nicest way, refused to go to bed until I get home. I wonder if there’s an element of anxiety at the root of that, or if it was just a tactical play so he could sit up and watch TV. Eithet way, it’s nice that I get to see him and say goodnight properly.

I begin Wednesday with another lie in. I just keep hitting that snooze button. I’m not counting , but I’m sure it must be a new record. I finally get up and post my June 1 diary. It’s time to get back into the world, as it were. I’ve been feeling generally in balance for the last week or so, and it’s time to bring my small number of social media brethren into the loop and move forward with the New Normal.

The Elderbeast has somehow appeared in my bed overnight, but this hasn’t improved his mood any. He refuses to get up, refuses to get dressed, and is generally evil for the duration of the morning. My patience and/or stubbornness prevail and I eventually get him out of the door.

By comparison, the work day is relatively easygoing. I’m truly feeling like I’m back in the swing of it: I’m able to engage in my job again, instead of it just feeling like something I need to endure until it’s time to go home again and not have to pretend to be a Professional Human any more. It helps that I get many wonderful and lovely responses to my diary post. People are shocked and surprised by what has happened, but they’re full of support for me and the kids. It is, as always, the people around me who have helped me get through this whole thing.

And, because it seems like something I really should have done before now, I finally [Facebook] unfriend the person who is now living with my wife. It doesn’t feel like a victory as such, but it does feel a necessary part of the process of sorting through and tidying the remaining pieces of my life.

Oops. I enjoy another lie in, instead of getting up to write. I figure I need the sleep after my rubbish night on Sunday.

My day starts with a meeting in the city, which I don’t mind because it gives me the chance to get a coffee from Babooshka. I even pack my iPad and keyboard, thinking I might get the chance to catch up on some writing. The journey gets off to a bad start when I switch to autopilot and miss the freeway on-ramp. When I finally get onto the freeway, the traffic is stupidly heavy. I watch as my window for coffee and writing dwindles. I eventually pass the cause of the delay: there’s been a breakdown in the bus lane and some genius has placed a traffic signal directing drivers away from the bus lane (which they can’t drive in anyway). The result is that everyone approaching the breakdown thinks they need to merge out of their lane and, as we all know, Perth drivers really don’t do merging well.

I eventually have time to grab a takeaway coffee. There’s a homeless man loitering at the counter regaling the staff with incomprehensible tales of his exploits. I pay for my coffee with a twenty, and he immediately pulls out a fistful of his own twenty dollar notes to show me. I can’t understand a word he’s saying, but I kinda like him. I ask the staff if there’s a toilet. They tell me there is, but I’ll need a key. No sooner have they said it than the homeless man pulls a key out of his pocket. It turns out to be the key for the toilet. “I own this whole place,” he tells me. I thank him and go about my business.

The day ends with another meeting in the city. I check the map and am amused to see that the road I need to look out for at the end of my route is called Twickenham Road. Right next to it is Teddington Road. The town I grew up in was Twickenham. And the town right next to it? Teddington.

I get home and learn that the Elderbeast has been in trouble at school again. I decide to take away his console games, including the Switch, during the week again. It’s less of a punishment, and more because it’s the one clear thing I can see that dramatically affects his behaviour and I’m otherwise out of ideas.

The law firm that I’ve engaged to organise the settlement for me have hit me up for more money. The initial outlay has been, very generously, covered by my family back in England, but it’s already been spent. I go through the invoice and realise it’s not surprising when it costs me more than $40 every time I send an email, and twice that to get a response. I decide to pay the amount owing, but opt not to deposit the additional $1,000 requested for future services. My main concern was getting the paperwork completed authoritatively and accurately. That’s been done now. I decide I can take it the rest of the way on my own.

It’s Fucken Monday, and it’s a public holiday for the whole of WA!

Except where I work.

I wake up dismayed to discover that I still have a headache: it woke me up in the night, and it lingers with me for the morning. I bypass my Morning Shift in favour of trying to sleep the headache off. It doesn’t work. I manage to get myself out of bed, make breakfast for the kinderbesten and swallow some panadol.

I asked Rachel to arrive by 8:30am to watch the kids so I could get off for work (because of course the schools are closed). She’s bang on time but I’m not even dressed. I finally leave the house and the roads are blissfully empty. Because everyone else gets a lie in today.

My headache finally begins to fade after some coffee and a dose of nurofen. I end up having quite a productive day, despite being left with a massive post-headache tiredness. Luckily we have leftovers for dinner (some pumpkin dahl) and the kinderbesten mostly keep themselves entertained. The Kinderbeast is somewhat restless at bed time, but eventually settles. I finally make it to the sofa at 8:30, armed with a glass of wine and an acceptable quantity of Brie. For my evening’s entertainment I’m onto part two of The Secret Of Crickley Hall, which continues to do a fine job of retaining my attention.

Even though Sunday is meant to be a writing day, I enjoy another good lie in–I’m not ready to push myself too hard yet, the writing will happen when it happens. We eat bacon sandwiches and play some Zelda, then it’s time to head out for Doggy Date. This is where those of us who own dogs bring the dogs out to play, and those of us who don’t own dogs get to play with the dogs. I bring the Kinderbesten for balance.

The day starts off in jeopardy when we get to Deepwater Point and find that dogs are not allowed. My brain struggles with the concept of a large open space where dogs are not welcome. We hang around long enough to get some food and research alternatives. Point Walter is apparently dog-unfriendly as well, but there is a dog friendly park close to the area so we head there.

We enjoy much excellent dogginess. The three dogs in our group are joined on various occasions by other dogs who want to play. We spend much time in particular with a whippet who literally runs rings around all the other dogs and, to all appearances, seems to be having a fantastic time.

We eventually tear ourselves away and I’m struck by how exhausted I feel after a relatively minor amount of walking around and outdoorsiness. I’m also struck by a headache which does little to enhance my pretence of being alive.

We get home and I initiate Sunday Afternoon Film Club, largely so I have an excuse to die on the sofa. We settle down for War Of The Worlds (the Spielberg version) which continues to be visually amazing, but still somehow doesn’t quite hit the mark. The sense of inevitable apocalypse is perfectly crafted, but I’m still not convinced that you can make an effective blockbuster where most of the characters are basically arseholes.

Afterwards we watch Moana. Again. Then I head into the kitchen to make my famous fake KFC (or: JFC – Justin’s Fried Chicken … which is actually baked). It’s a great success.

Once the Kinderbeast settles in bed, it’s time for the Elderbeast and I to catch up on Doctor Who. We missed last week’s episode, so we get a double bill tonight. It’s the end of the ‘monk trilogy’ and it starts off well, but the final episode completely squanders both its premise and promise and ends up being very average.

I go to bed, hoping my headache will have faded by the morning.

It’s Saturday, which even in single-parentland is still Designated Lie-In Day. I make it to 8am before I start to get twitchy and get myself out of bed. Even though I did the weekly shop yesterday, I’m still keen to foster the Saturday Morning Family Food Shopping Trip that has become a surprisingly successful habit over the past weeks. Fortunately, a friend of mine is doing a food drive for her charity which gives me the perfect excuse to drag the kinderbeasts to the supermarket.

We, once again, survive the experience and return home for Saturday Morning Film Club. We have some debate over what to watch, and then I remember I have a copy of The LEGO Batman Movie conveniently lying around somewhere (ha! sucks to be you Village Roadshow!). It’s not quite up there with The LEGO movie, but it’s easily the best Batman film since The Dark Knight (ha! sucks to be you DC … Movies … or whatever you’re called!). Afterwards it’s time for the traditional weekend viewing of Moana. Which is still awesome. Even after the 500th time.

I have friends coming round for the evening and had great intentions of preparing food early in the day. Which I totally didn’t do. I then make the mistake of settling on the sofa to watch a bit of Moana, and decide that I really don’t want to move again. Ever. I eventually rouse myself and get the food underway (a selection of roasted vegetables, marred only by some disappointingly flaccid baby carrots). It is a very fine, very chilled out evening made all the more memorable by my most artistically inclined friend designing and drawing me a fantastic coat of arms for the newly dubbed Castle Cawthorne.

I have a confession to make: it’s been a long time since I last went to the dentist. a *long* time. Years. Many of them. Double figures, in fact. So, given that today starts with a visit to the dentist I’m … actually surprised I’m not a whole lot more nervous!

When Rachel and I separated one of the many side-effects was having to cancel our existing family health insurance and set up new, separate accounts. We ended up with a different insurer who, as it happened, threw in a free dental check. They even passed on my details to the dentist (with my permission, of course) so the dentist could get in touch and arrange an initial appointment. In the face of all of this convenience, it would have been an extreme act of self-defeat for me to not finally get myself into the dentist’s chair.

Well, it turns out I must be taking fairly good care of my teeth as, aside from the usual scrape and polish, all I need are a few fairly minor fillings. Best of all, half the price gets knocked off with my shiny new health insurance, so I expect there’s a better than average chance I’ll be back. I spend the rest of the morning getting used to the odd new gaps in my teeth, exposed by the cleaning, and marvelling at the fact that my teeth no longer look like something that might get me cast in a zombie movie.

I meet Rachel for coffee afterwards and hand over the additional papers she needs to sign. It’s been a challenging, albeit swift, road to get to the point where we can sit and have coffee together again, but the reason is simple: we have kids, they need to be protected, and that means we need to remain friends. Or at least something close to it. Afterwards she comes back to the house and helps me move some furniture around. With all of her stuff now gone there are some refreshing new possibilities for arranging my furniture. We don’t move much, but it’s enough to make a huge difference and I start to get a real buzz about my new look home.

Then it’s time for Fridate with the wonderful Seb, who has remained my staunch Fridate companion through all of this. We have a chat about the various emotional ups and downs I’ve traversed this week (Fridate has become something of an unofficial regular therapy session for me) then settle down for our new regular feature: Friday night horror. This week we’re giving the prequel to The Thing another watch. I’ve only seen it once, and Seb has seen it never.

It turns out to be better than I remembered, only let down by some slightly clunky CGI. I find that the tension and paranoia is particularly well handled, and even wonder if the Obligatory Thing Scenes end up as more of a distraction than anything else. I also notice that there are a lot of the same beats in the story as the original film (a sabotaged blood test, a stand-off in the corridor, etc), almost as if they started out writing a remake and then converted it into a prequel.

Next week, one of my all time favourites: The Howling.