The World According To Me

This morning was a triumph.

See, despite how I may feel in my mind when the alarm goes off and I want to spring out of bed to face the day (sometimes), the body is not always willing. I'm the unfortunate recipient of early-onset, sporadically appearing and disappearing arthritis which has currently settled itself into, amongst other places, the bones on the top of my right foot and up into my ankle. I know it will go away, maybe tomorrow, maybe in another month, but it's been there for about 6 weeks now and is causing me HELL. So when it comes to leaping out of bed to fling back the curtains, soak up the dawn sunlight and exclaim "What a BEEEEAAAAUUUTTTIFUL day!", it would be more accurate to say that I forget about how my ankle has seized up during the night and as soon as my feet hit the floor I let out a yelp followed closely by a stream of expletives.

And yes, there are pills I can pop every morning for this, and after a while they will kick in, I will be pain free and able to properly hold a pen or open a coffee jar before 10am without wanting to cry (or actually crying). But these pills are treating the symptoms, not the cause, and I try to avoid them if I can. I've tried GP's, a rheumatologist, osteopathic massage, naturopaths, taking fish-oil tablets (whereby every time I burped it tasted like there was a fish-market in my mouth. Not entirely pleasant), taking anti-inflammatories, cutting back on red meat, cutting back on dairy, celery seed tablets and a plethora of other aids which I hoped would prevent the onset of these attacks I get, or at the very least, ease the inflammation and swelling whilst I am experiencing it. The GP's whip out their script pad and instruct me to take one tablet in the morning and one at night, after food. The rheumatologist charged me $180 to tell me he wasn't entirely sure why this happens to me, but here, take these tablets for the rest of your natural life and watch out for those possible side effects. Hair-loss? Check. Weight-gain? I don't need any more! Insomnia? No thanks….the naturopath was good, but I secretly believe they have shares in soy-bean farms and I can't convince myself that cow milk is evil. The osteopathic massage felt nice, but did bugger all to help.

Last night, however, I purchased some Tiger-Balm ointment from the chemist, figuring it couldn't hurt. The worst that could happen is that it ends up in the bathroom cupboard with all my other ill-fated cure-alls, right? I asked Pom very nicely to rub some on the lumpy and troublesome part of my foot whilst I was laying on the couch watching TV swanning it up like the princess I imagine myself to be, and the blessed thing obliged.

It felt a little tingly, a little warm, not at all unpleasant, and smelt interesting too. We later went to bed as usual, joined by both of the 'kids' (Aggie has taken to claiming the warmest part of the bed, right inbetween us, until Pom unceremoniously took her out into the sunroom, citing he was too afraid to roll over in case he crushed her) and went to sleep.

This morning….I get out of bed and make my way to the kitchen and flick on the kettle. I drank my coffee, showered, ate my muesli, put my make-up on and tried to get a brush through my mop of hair. Fed the 'kids', did some ironing, berated Pom about not doing the dishes. Entirely normal morning. Until I realised that I had not once felt any pain in my ankle/foot.

Nothing.

No seizing, no pain, no yelping or expletives. Still lumpy and swollen, but not hurting.

Tiger-balm is my new friend.

Weekend shoe-shopping went off with a "I can't believe I just bought five new pairs of shoes at once ooooooooooh they're all so cute AND CHEAP lets go and eat really heavy creamy pasta on Lygon Street and be charmed by an old Italian waiter with dodgy teeth" bang. I do like Melbourne, I must admit. I like it more now than I did when I lived there. But I also like just taking day trips/weekends and knowing I'll be coming home to a place where trips to the supermarket to buy milk don't require an hour blocked out of my day, or being lazy by driving everywhere because parking is so easy is a viable option. Trips to Melbourne make me so tired, I need to sleep for hours and hours afterwards. Not sure what that's about, I hope it's not some sort of underlying allergic reaction.

Agnes has learned how to get up on the garage roof, and then meows to come and be rescued. Really quite cute. The first few times. She has also learned that hopping into bed with her mum is kind of snuggly, especially when she positions herself half under the doona with her head on the pillow. After kneading my hair and purring loudly into my ear of course.

Have also recently discovered the wonders of Ebay. I decided to get together all of the shit I don't use anymore that still may retain some value to someone and flog it off via the interweb. HOW MUCH FUN IS IT (not a question). Although it perplexes me how someone will hand over $6 for a Sophie Ellis-Baxter CD and not a single bid is placed for Kylie's 'Fever'. Does no-one have any taste? (says the broad who hangs her head in shame at actually paying full price for these albums). I have most recently sold a new pair of trainers which didn’t cost me a dime, but also didn't fit, for $52. Unfortunately most of my new-found wealth is being returned to others in exchange for Something for Kate CD's I didn't have in my collection.

I made the BEST beef and red lentil curry last night for dinner, with pappadums. New favourite recipe.

My 'workstation'* is a plethora of files, correspondence, Court documents, sadness, hope, grief and many, many post-it notes with undecipherable numbers or words which I can't remember the meaning of but am too frightened to throw away. There are various sized bulldog clips, pre-printed labels for mail I send to oft-used addresses and pens that I only remember don't work when I pick one up and try to notate telephone conversations. I have a bottle of water which I refill many times a day, until it starts to get that weird smell about it and then I discard it and buy a new one. I have a dictaphone machine, police interview tapes of people confessing to horrendous crimes and denying others. 'No comment' interviews are so boring to transcribe, I love it when people are creative and come up with fanciful tales about exactly why they were carrying a baseball bat in the vicinity of someone lying on the ground with a cracked skull. I have a little toy orangutan** who is almost out of view behind my flat screen, given to me by one of my little sisters quite a few birthdays ago, I still love it. I used to have a birthday present from another little sister, a playdough lizard with googly eyes, baked until hard and painted lurid blue and green stripes. One of his feet got knocked off and I stuck it back on with blu-tack and it lasted a few more years until the fateful day it was knocked off my hard-drive and was irreparably destroyed, and I was sad. No amount of blu-tack would have worked. I have a notice-board which took six months of nagging to be tacked to the wall to the left of my desk. On that I have pinned the Magistrates' Court scale of Costs, a ten-pin bowling print-out of when I thrashed Pom 131-75, the timetable of classes at my gym, a post-it note that a client pinned to a document apologising for 'her tardiness' (I KNOW what it means, but I never said my sense of humour was particularly PC or tasteful), various usernames and passwords for programs I rarely use, a photo of Lucy sitting proudly, her doleful chocolaty liquid eyes looking straight through the lens. There's a print-out of how I am to cost family law files, and each time I refer to it I wonder how anyone can justify charging $28.65 for reading each page of a letter. The most recent addition to the board is the tag from a cat toy I purchased from the dinky $2 shop down the street for Agnes last week which has the delightful Engrish declaration "a quality and value products from ****** imports". I love that a lot. I have files stacked around my feet, I have to take a giant step over if I want to get away from my desk. I know where everything is, all of the time, even if some days it takes a few seconds to find my mouse.

I spend so much of my time here, at this space. I spend more time here than in my own bedroom.

I think that is sad.


*I hate the word. It's so mid-90's new-wave management speak. But I wanted to use it to annoy myself.

Why is it that when I go to the supermarket I always choose the checkout lane where one or more of the following happens;