The Fringe

The honeymoon is over.

So cliche.

The metaphorical puff of flatulence has moved the honeymoon into marriage. Blissful ignorance into reality.

We've now been in our house for nearly six months, so we had a good long honeymoon. Some might have wanted a little longer but I'm not overly greedy. Want what you've got and all of that, a good adage to pretend to live by.

Act One: Honeymoon: Our own home. Perfect in its apparent and robust imperfections. Protagonist weeds garden and dreams of decks and lattice. Children bounce on trampoline and remain uninjured.

Act Two: Honeymoonic Rumbles: Movement noted in curtains when blustery gales buffeting the city. Builder arrives on blue sunlit day. A bit off rip here and bang there. The house will be blustery no more. What's that dripping noise? Starting to see imperfections not over robust.

Act Three: Marriage: Dark clouds gather. Thunder threatens. A stud which I've often been on a quest to find from within the walls has mysteriously disappeared. Where is the stud? Where can it be? It can only be found with the opening wide of the wallet and emptying of its bowels.

And so when will the play finish? How many acts will torture the once entranced house owner? Fingers crossed if the borer continues to hold hands the house will remain erect. Had mad thought that injecting Viagra into the holes might help in this aim.

But luckily, we're located on what is cheerfully noted as the 'City Fringe' by real estate agents.

The fringe? Considering where the city is, say where the nose is on the face, then the fringe would be the pubic region. And I don't want to think about those sort of fringes. I suspect real estate agents in their poetical wisdom do not think it a goer to advertise houses on the city's pubis. Sounds positively painful.

Thinking about fringes, they're usually used to cover things up. My fringe sails over a craggy brow. The fringe on the chaise lounge disguises a car wheel which I really don't know where to put or what to do with. Fringes can be deceit-fool.

Here I dwelll on the city fringe - I wonder what exactly this fringe is hiding?

Slipping into Dotage

It's happened.

Slippers have found their way onto my feet. That in itself is not the tragedy. The tragedy exists in the fact that I don't want to take them off and would even answer the door in them. Not just answer the door, I danced out to the letterbox in them.
Worryingly, if I hadn't been in my pyjamas I could've danced all the way to the moon. But even space isn't ready for me in my sheepskins and flannelettes.
I'd like to think they were those little 'cocktaily' slippers with the kitten heel. Mine, however, have nothing to do with cats, my comfort is sought through the unhappy demise of a perhaps once happy sheep (citizenship unknown). It is not wise to dwell on the fate of the cosier. My rationale here is that the sheep had long since digested its last blade of grass before I stumbled across them in K-Mart. And I paid full price. It did not die in vain gasping at the bottom of the bargin bin.
It died for a good cause. Mine. Anyway, I can hardly choke on guilt when I have no such guilt trips when eating the Sunday roast.

How would the conversation go? I can't even begin to think of an opening gambit. I can only imagine it in a Dickensian novel, the Sheepskin Carol. How I'd greet a woolley apparition belongs cheerfully in nightmares. I wonder if my feet, size 10 (on a good day) ever featured in the sheep's nightmare?
Speaking of which, if we count sheep to lull us to nigh-nigh... what do sheep count? I can think of nothing pastoral and calming that would befit the sweet dreams of a sheep. Perhaps bales of hale and new grass blades blowing in the breeze.
But I digress. My feet are warm and I am content in their snugness. Sadly, I have not given them much thought in my youth as I shovelled them into shoes fit for tiny, pointy feet.
I think it's official, I am a spinster. Which only begs the question, can a divorcee become a spinster? I'll sleep on it and in them.

Paranoinka

It's here.

A sniff or cough is no longer a snuffle. It's swine flu. No 'ifs' or 'buts'. Cough and the person next to you stiffens in horror. Of course, if a mask is being worn, the brow drops slightly in relief that says, "Hey, I might look silly, but I'll still be around to watch the next episode of 'Desperate Housewives'".

One damp Monday morning, the smallest noted with concern that he had two symptoms of swine flu, drawing the conclusion that he should stay home. I suggested that if unless he could prove he'd snogged a hog, he was going to school.

Simply paranoia? If we're sneezing on the precipice of a viral disaster, I'd not like it be me to say that it's all a storm in a media tea-cup. Michael Jackson took over the front pages for a while, and he wasn't linked to any pig, well not adult ones anyway. Perhaps, looking at the way the King of Pop has been exploited since moon walking off his mortal coil, this flu could be deemed devine retribution for the western masses who no longer forage for food instead choosing to masticate on infamous misfortunates.

Paranoia comes in waves, often fuelled by slow news days. We ride them. Y2K blustered through and Bird Flu offered another chance to wear masks but didn't deliver the full load of dread. I've only recently started releasing baked beans from their rusty Y2K-kit entombment.

The emergency kit. It's a great idea. But where will you be when the emergency strikes? I'd suggest that if you're trying to wrestle a bar of chocolate from the office snack bar machine at the 'strike time' you're too far from your emergency kit for it to be much use. It could be buried under the rubble. Or the baked beans may be so out-of-date that if you remembered to replace the can opener you borrowed from the kit in 2005 they could kill you through orange botulism.

It's bedtime. Fingers crossed the bed bugs won't bite... and if they do...