BUSTED
You’re Only Five Feet - TISM

It’s buzzing around me like a 3am mosquito.

Weddings and babies. Babies and weddings. I just can’t seem to get away from it. I’ve tried burying myself in my work and in the tasks at hand but for the past month I’ve had pregnant bellies and wedding photos thrust before my face.

I bitch and moan and Christine and Michael laugh at my woe.

"Jealous much?" she jabs as me. Her tone all-knowing and her posture similar to that of some arrogant judge peering over the bench.

"No. I’m just sick of hearing about it. I’m just over it."

That’s not exactly true. I’m madly in love with Tom and we’ve tossed around plans for the future including a wedding and a baby and a house in the suburbs. But it’s a plan without any firm grounding. There’s been no proposal and there’s been no announcement. So while the rest of the world is doing what we’ve been planning, I’m feeling a little left behind.

"Admit it, you want to get married. You’re our own little Muriel." Michael, who has a passion for Muriel’s Wedding (except for the sad bit when he turns it off), adds to the tension.

The idea repulses me. I refuse to be that stereotypical. Some half-wit hanging out for the dress and the fancy dinner. It’s no me. It’s not the kind of situation I live for.

But, love is what it is.

It’s depressingly happy. It’s flowers and hearts and practicing writing my name with his surname. It’s seeing a pregnant lady and asking when she’s due. It’s crying at romantic comedies and smiling (rather than scowling) whenever you see a couple holding hands in the mall. All of my life I have struggled not to be one of these people but it’s pointless to resist.

Love is pathetic and I’ve spent months trying to hide this latest flaw in my character.

"It’s not the wedding I’m after. You two have no idea how I’m dreaming that."

Crap. A Freudian slip. A small insight into my subconscious.

"Oh my God, you want to get married!" Christine yelped. "You want to have his babies and you want to live in a little house with a white picket fence." She laughed a cruel, dark laugh as though she’d caught me out. What made it worse, she had.

"Jesus, please tell me you’re not going to start baking and sewing. I don’t think I could stand seeing you in an apron." Michael joined the fray.

This had been my dark little secret until now. I had put on a good show that nothing had changed since I’d started going out with Tom. Unfortunately it has. Unfortunately I am joining a new race of creature.

The dreaded couple.

When Michael and Christine stopped laughing they filled my glass but I was fuming. For the past five months Tom and I have been wrapped in out own little world. I have gone to great lengths to conceal that I had been feeling and acting like a teenager and now my two best friends were snickering.

"Fuck off."

Sometimes you can’t be eloquent when you’ve been caught out.

RC

The clock keeps ticking over as the codes sprawl their way across this screen.

This room rattles with an unusual distortion of the English language. Abbreviations, codes and slang flowing naturally through my new little sub-culture.

"What’s the NT on NACRW’s case in the TP file."

"It looks like a POSSDUP with this case so run it through to DT."

"We’re down. Go manual on BAPTO using the code 9 hash."

And like clockwork the team members come and go. Each break strictly timed. It’s a beautiful process when you get the chance to sit back and watch it. Like clockwork the room rises and falls on predicted waves.

Through the door and out and then it’s gone. The precision and the clockwork doesn’t miss you but happily picks up the slack your absence creates, or rather due to the precision, you leave just as things go quiet.

Despite the regularity and precision there is a life in the creature that is my new workplace. The people, alive and well within their constraints, are nothing like those at my previous jobs.

These people are alive and friendly and appear to have enough individuality to avoid turning grey in their tightly fitting suites.

This is a strange world I’ve stepped into. Happiness with it’s comfortable relationship and enjoyable job.

I think I might just stay a little while, see if I fit in.

Anyway, that’s MTE from this LM.

THIS WEEK'S THEME

I’ve been, wait for it...... reading the newspaper.

For the first time in two years I have actually opened those thin sheets of tattered paper and found….. Nothing.

The same dribble there always was. Heartfelt, over dramatised, stories about "young lives have been cut tragically short" (because God forbid we should actually come out and say the driver was an idiot and deserved to be wiped off the face of this earth.)

These are the stories that bother me. These are the stories I just couldn’t make myself write. But they seem to be the bread and butter of Australia’s metro papers.

The theme of today seems to be young drivers (in the past we’ve had vicious dog attacks, under-age drinking, gangs and so forth).

Journalists who are more than happy to suggest it’s all the government’s fault (with out explaining how the Government is to blame for the actions of an individual). Journalists comfortable with the idea that inexperienced drivers, who kill not only themselves but the people around them, are somehow the victims of social conditioning.

But no one, not a sole, will point their fingers at the young driver and say, "Well, that’s what you get if you drive like an idiot."

No one will turn to the parents and give them a slap over the head for letting their teenage kids buy, or in some cases buying them, cars well beyond their capabilities.

Today the Daily Telegraph had its own suggestions for fixing the problem.

* RESTRICT P-platers to carrying one passenger;

* LIMIT the power of the vehicles they can drive; and

* PROVIDE driver education in schools so they have a better understanding of safe driving before they take to the road.

It’s all well and good. Logical ideas that will ensure new drivers (and let’s not only assume they’re all "kids". I didn’t start driving until I was 22 and I’m not alone so the media’s constant reference to young drivers is pissing me off no end).

But here’s my two cents, as an ex-journalist who simply wouldn’t buy into the theory that society is to blame for everything.

Leave things how they are. Nature seems to be culling the population nicely.

I’d like to think that if I died doing something stupid then people would simply shrug their shoulders, dismiss me as a moron and move on with their lives.

I wouldn’t want my stupidity to become and "issue" for Australia to debate.

Besides, if you’re too stupid to realise that driving at 200km/h on a public road could be deadly then do we really need you in the gene pool? We've got enough problems already.

WISHING FOR TIME
I’ll Back You Up – Dave Matthews Band

You may be spouting, or arguing your case in your social sphere. Trying to set the record straight will only hinder your influence on people. Your world is very different to other people. Quieten the chatter inside of you. Adapting, instead of chiselling would be the way. Walk your own way.

Ok, so I read my stars. I read them and, at times, I heed them.

I’ve been neglecting Christine and last night she made it loud and clear that she’s noticed my lack of attention. The drunken phone call, most unwelcome at 11.30pm, listed my failings over the past couple of months.

Christine rambled on and I let her go, not even bothering to butt in and correct her broad interpretations of my actions, or rather inactions.

"I haven’t seen you for two months and you don’t care. You’re too busy playing house with your wonderful boyfriend to be bothered thinking about me."

I guess she’s right. There’s something about coupling that shuts out the entire world. For the past five month’s it’s been Tom and I.

It’s been Tom and I living together.
Tom and I discussing our approach to the kids.
Tom and I considering out future.
Tom and I and family functions.
Tom and I…

"You know I’ve never seen you so wrapped up in a guy before and I’m really happy for you." Caroline was silent for a few moments and in the background I could hear the thumping music from the bar barely drowning out the shouts of her drunken companions. "Ah crap. I’m not happy for you, I’m jealous. I miss hanging out with you, I miss sitting on the balcony and drinking coffee. You’re doing all of our shit with him and it’s not fair. I’m too pissed off. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"Nothing," I just let the answer come and didn’t think for a second. "I’ve just had so much on my plate it’s hard to see beyond my own little world."

Caroline blew a raspberry and it echoed through the phone. "Get over it. Obviously I’ll just have to start butting into your life a little more if you can’t get around your own crap to come into mine. I just wish you’d put in a little more effort to keeping in contact." She laughed. "Oh well, I’ve got to go, there’s a cute guy looking lonely at the bar." And she hung up.

It was enough. The matter was off her chest and she sounded lighter for her little tantrum.

So there I stood at 12.15am in the middle of my back yard. Tom, after initially being woken by the call, had slipped back into bed. The kids merely grizzled at the sound of the phone and didn’t move. It was just me in the middle of the moonlit backyard.

And it felt good to be by myself for a change. It felt good to be me and not Tom’s girlfriend or the kids’ potential step-mum. I simply walked through the darkness and sat calmly on the front step.

There I waited, silently, for shooting stars to wish my own wishes upon.

SHUT UP WOMAN

I have a job.

Once a journalist, living a 24-hour-a-day job that was riddled with boredom. Now a call-centre operator, a life where I walk out the door and it’s over and each and every minute is a new phone call requiring a different tact.

"Oh," she’s a family friend of 30 years. "It really doesn’t have the same ring as journalist. I mean, journalism was a career. Call centre is just a job."

She never got it.

A woman who’s just turned 40 she owns four apartments, three of which are making a healthy return. She works in a high-profile job and is on-call 24-7 although that’s fair enough considering her healthy pay packet.

Once a week she would visit my mother, one of her few friends, and moan about how lonely she was. She would tell my mother regularly that "there are simply no men out there who want a strong woman" and my mother would agree.

But in her world nothing was ever good enough. She had to have the best apartment, the best furniture and the best of people around her. As for her relationships, the same would apply, no man was good enough.

"I only want a job. I don’t want a career with all those trappings."

"Yeah but wouldn’t you like to be able to afford your own place to live in. I mean your apartment is all well and good but a career means you could upgrade to a house and a new car."

It’s the same conversation with her every time we meet. While the rest of the world seems adjusted to my new way of life she just can’t that to me the material possessions aren’t an indication of success.

"No. I’m happy with what I’ve got. Sure it’d be great to have more money but in the long run it just costs too much. I’m not willing to sacrifice my life to have more things I don’t really need."

"Well it’s not much of a life if you can’t afford to get what you want. I mean, look at me, I’m a single woman and I’ve got everything I ever wanted."

"Except a life," it slipped out and I’m not proud of it but the truth is that this particular woman boils my blood. She refuses, flat out refuses, to accept that people are different. She refuses to see that just because people don’t agree with her doesn’t make them wrong.

"I’ve got a life thank you very much," she huffed. And then there was silence for a few moments but she didn’t back off. "You know in the future I know that I’m safe and secure. My greatest fear has always been insecurity in my old age."

My greatest fear was becoming her but I couldn’t tell her that.

Instead I just left her alone with her apartments and demanding job. I left her alone with her righteousness and smothering security.

Just like everyone else has.

FIRST TIME

The planning wasn’t so much planning as merely happening.

Tom’s mum, the kids, my parents and four hours of barbecue fun. The idea of bringing my two worlds together was daunting, but necessary considering the speed at which we're moving.

Ms 7 was nit free for the first time in months (thanks to three hours of combing from Tom) so we figured it was the best time to get the families together. Unfortunately my nieces and nephew had a case of "squirty botty" and were unable to come.

Leaving us alone to bond.

My mum and Tom’s mum huddled together in the kitchen over coffees, cutlery and all food preparation. They seemed to come together with little effort and talked as though they’d known each other for years.

"Why don’t you sit down. You’re a guest, you don’t have to do this," mum says lightly, not wanting to appear as commanding. Tom’s mum stands with a tea-towel in her hand. She’s poised and ready to attack "I’m not comfortable just sitting around," she responds. "Doing stuff like this makes me feel as though I belong in a room." And the pair tackle their tasks chatting amiably all the while.

Dad and Tom stood bonding outside around the barbecue. Dad prodding at the meat and Tom responsible for stoking and fuelling the fire.

"It seems to be dying down," dad says with his mouth full of sausage that he’s "testing" as part of his quality control. And Tom jumps into action reaching for the wood. "Nup, not that stuff. We need the harder wood over there," dad directs his actions and Tom follows his lead.

The kids had also settled in as though my parent’s home was their personal wonderland. Ms 7 ran around a house with the digital camera taking pictures of the dogs and the cat, of my mum and dad, of Tom and the garden. Mr 10 was curled on the lounge and lost in the world of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Oddly enough I wasn’t lost in the fray. For a period I stood talking with Tom’s mum about the frustrations of dealing with someone else’s children and she freely shared with me her similar views. I stood with the boys around the blazing fire and discussed the risk of sunburn and the right temperatures needed to cook the perfect steak. Mum and I took control of the dessert serving and the kids and I played with the dogs.

I belonged. They belonged.

Welcome to an entire new world known as Boswell’s happy family.

MOUSIE
Freedom - George Michael

It was a streak of darkness across the back of the sink.

We had a mouse. We’d had a mouse for almost a month and the little ball of filth had only been seen by me. Sure, Tom had seen it’s remnants in the corner of the kitchen but for some odd reason it only made a full-on appearance in the middle of the night when I was alone.

The creature would dash across the middle of the kitchen as I stumbled out for a glass of water. As a result I would scream like a child and Tom, bleary eyed and confused, would dash from the bedroom to my aid.

Other times I’m not sure that I saw it at all, only that there was something moving in the corner of my eye. Movement that drew my attention to the door or to the dark corners of the room only to be gone the moment I look with any attention.

And I’d like to repeat. We did have a mouse.

It was on our return from Guildford Coles, where Tom and I bought a rose bush, that I foolishly approached the sink to give the rose a good watering.

There it was. Briefly. Racing across the back of the bench and then disappearing into the sink filled with water. It’s tiny form bobbing up and down against the shiny sides in a bid to escape. But the water was just low enough that the mouse was unable to jettison it out.

I was brave.

"Oh my God, Oh my God," short sentences making no sense. "Tom there’s a mouse. A mouse in the sink. Oh my God." (Well I can’t always be eloquent.)

Once I settled down and realised that the little ball of terror wasn’t going to be leaping out of the sink I ventured closer. Suddenly I felt pity for the small creature as it frantically paddled to keep its head above water.

"Kill it." In a moment of clarity I wasn’t afraid. It was short lived as Tom asked me to hold a plastic bag so he could pour the clamering creature from the bucket he had used to scoop it up in.

"No, I can’t. I won’t. I’ll drop it. The whole thing’s just ooooo."

Thankfully Tom was patient and simply asked me to turn my head. And with one fluid movement the exhausted creature was in the bag and heading for the door in Tom’s capable hands.

I asked no questions about the fate of the little rodent. Instead I walked deep into the house and waited for Tom to return.

Bang, thud and silence. The Tom’s heavy boots could be heard coming up the hallway. Alone.

SICK, AGAIN.
Falling for the First Time – Barenaked Ladies.

My doctor thinks he’s a comedian.

"If you’re body produces enough pain to stop you in your tracks then I think it’s trying to tell you that you should stop, don’t you?"

"You’re too stressed. So stop it."

On Monday night I vomited without repentance. The cry came regularly at 15 minute intervals. My head feeling as though it’s ready to crack and the muscles in the back of my neck are so tense that I can’t turn my head.

I finally fall asleep at 7.30 on Tuesday morning after Tom relaxes me and sets me up for a day trapped in bed. The phone squared off safely by pillows but within my reach. A bucket by the bed. A drink sits a safe, but obtainable, distance from me.

There’s not enough praise in the world for Tom when I’m sick.

"You know it’s just a migraine but if you don’t pay attention you’ll give yourself a stroke."

Despite the horrible Monday night and Tuesday I didn’t go to the doctor, after all it was just a migraine and it would pass. I went to work on Wednesday but that night it came back with a vengeance.

At 10pm Tom asked if I needed to see a doctor. The pain was blinding. I could no longer see out of my left eye and the vision in my right eye was abysmal. It was as though a massive hand had grabbed onto the top of my skull and was trying to grind my head into a fine powder.

I was nauseous, dizzy and terrified. So we went to Westmead Hospital and waited two hours. Thankfully the kind triage nurse (the first one, not the second one who arrived at 11pm – she was a bitch) gave me codine and I was pretty much stoned for the duration of my stay.

But when nurse bitch arrived and began slamming doors and abusing patients who were making only polite requests (fair enough if they had been rude) we decided it would be better to fair the pain at home rather than letting her add to it.

Luckily, the dose of codine had been enough and I passed out vowing I would visit my doctor the next day.

So I sat in the office on Thursday afternoon with my doctor opposite me in his mismatched clothes and loud tie. He took my blood pressure, checked my eyes, listened to my heart and quizzed me about the hospital trip.

"You were showing all the signs of a stroke and they give you codine. I wonder how they’d treat a stabbing victim – with a tissue?"

I smile weakly. That’s pretty much they way I’ve done everything this week – weakly. I’ve been a heavy lump of clay and it’s been a struggle just to move.

"Now, don’t worry so much. Get some sleep."

I thank the pudgy man, squished into his chair, for the advice and make my way back onto Guildford Rd. It’s raining and I know that standing in the rain isn’t the best thing for me considering how sick I’ve been.

Still the cold rain on my hot skin feels so good that I linger there on the footpath. Taking a moment for myself.

ILLOGICAL LOGIC

Is ten minutes too much to ask?

Tom was in bed while I was downloading. He’s curled up tight and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was asleep by the time I get there. As I type he just jumped into bed without a word and that was that. I only discovered his sleeping form when I went to the bedroom through boredom as I waited.

Whatever.

I know it’s me. I know I’m reading too much into the little things. I know that I’m looking for something to go wrong and I’m waiting for those “first signs”.

Is this it? Is this the first time he begins to lose interest?

Sure, he hasn’t had enough sleep over the past couple of weeks. A man who wakes at the slightest noise including the sound of the birds in the morning, he’s been getting less than five hours a night now that summer’s here.

I could realise that but no. For some reason my mind simply won’t settle on that logical conclusion.

I assume he’s not interested. I assume that he’s beginning to question the relationship. I assume that he just wants to get away from me.

These leaps of logic say more about me then about him.

Am I so radically insecure that something as simple as the need for sleep must mean something more dire?

And then I consider this. I’ve jumped onto this computer and started typing. While I was absorbed in my work I didn’t even notice that he’d gone.

If I’m going to start reading something into everything he does, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do the same thing? If I were in his shoes then the conclusion would be that I don’t want to be with him. After all, I didn’t even notice he was gone he could easily see that as I was more interested in this thing then in him.

Ah, see, I’ve caught myself. I’ve found the undeniable fault in my illogical logic.

But that’s the beauty of being so illogical. I can ignore these faults. After all, I’m looking at the world from my perspective.

And from here I’m right despite the proof to the contrary.

When morning comes he leaps from bed and yawns, stretching his arms the fist words “I love you” followed by a hug. “Damn I was tired last night, I was just laying then and passed out.”

Damn it, I hate it when the logical reason makes itself apparent and all of my theories are blown away.

I failed the test.

My first negative result.

I'm equal parts relieved and disappointed.