I've looked at clouds from both sides now

There are two ways of looking at my life.

One is that I work part-time. This is true. I go to the office from Tuesday to Thursday, I do a few hours from home on Friday, and I draw a part-time salary.

The other is that I have three jobs. This is also true. Besides my office job (subediting), I do freelance editing, with widely varying regularity, and I run a little website. You know all this already.

Thing is, both views really are true. Most of my co-workers — probably all of them — assume* that I spend my weekends lolling in the sun and knitting. Yes, that has been known to happen.** I’m not very good at getting out of bed at a reasonable time when I don’t have to. I get to run errands at my convenience, rather than on Saturday mornings with the rest of the world, which is a great relief but also interferes with my attempts to instil in myself a proper work ethic and structured work-from-home routine.***

But even though out of the office, I don’t work to any kind of regulated system, I most certainly do work. So far this year, f’rinstance, I have already done almost twice as many freelance hours as I did in all of 2005. Much of this has regularly kept me up till 3am as I tried to finish a particularly hard-to-kill job for a Canadian client, working on Canadian time. I get a lot of emails saying, “Help! Can you turn this around, like, RIGHT NOW?” …And I say yes. Because I work fast, I am flexible**** and I like the money.

And the website, while more fun than you might believe possible, is a whole bundle of challenges of its own. The stuff that presents itself for immediate attention ranges from daily tasks like packing and posting orders to irregular (but fairly frequent) big jobs like unpacking, photographing and uploading new product arrivals. And, you know, accounting, maintaining the blog, monitoring stock levels, and basic planning and emailing and advertising and market research and so on.

But then there’s the stuff that doesn't demand attention, the stuff that is potentially the most important — long-range planning, creative marketing, networking… this shit takes time too. And energy. And a clear headspace. And this is hard to find.

So my to-do list***** is quite interesting. It includes things like “phone scary Hollywood lawyers”, which frankly has me quaking in my adorable high-heeled boots,****** as well as “order more boxes”, which is a bit less glamorous but a lot less scary and might get done sooner. It doesn’t get much shorter from week to week, it just changes shape. At the moment it is a huge bloated beast of fear, frankly, since there’s that social life thing happening. It dominates my weekends and my waking thoughts. It controls me. It controls my sleep, or lack thereof. It is a manxome foe indeed, and it has thoroughly slain that delightful concept of a Nothing Day that I remember with great fondness from about two years ago.

And it has had the quite remarkable effect of turning my Tuesday-to-Thursday “working week” into recovery time. Whatever my co-workers may believe.
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* They know about my extracurricular activities, but I don’t think they really believe in them.
** When there is sun, at any rate. So not very often.
*** It must be said that these attempts are more theoretical than practical. As in: Must learn self-discipline! Must work from 9 to 5 even when at home, and not in pyjamas! …Hang on, was that 9am or 9pm?
**** I do yoga.
***** Actually I haven’t signed up for this yet, but I like the look of it very much.
****** Not really. They are adorable high-heeled sandals. This being summer.

How comforting

So letting the conservatives win on a "poisonous" and annoying women's issue — abortion — would really be doing everyone a favour. Then the high-minded liberals could wash their hands of the whole embarrassing mess and focus on the interesting stuff like jobs, education and healthcare.

Meaning care of men's health, presumably.

Your health, pea-flowered

That is the subject line of one of the many spam emails I have been receiving. I find it hard to object too violently to this deluge when the messages are so poetic.

Your cash, one-humped.

I want to write something witty and original about this, but I really can't top the lines themselves.

Your money, mouse-eared.

What more is there to say?

EWWWWW!

You think your shoes are manky? See the most disgusting shoe ever.

I love that it actually moves.

Rescued from the comments

Courtesy of Strawberryfrog: What the internet is for.

It's good to see married life* hasn't changed him.

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* All 9 days of it.

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome

Right now, Beloved is at Heathrow, meeting an Old Friend (TM).* The moment they arrive back will mark the beginning of about 10 days of intense socialising with various Old Friends who all seem to be converging on Londonville in the exact same week-and-a-bit; two of them are staying with us (though not at the same time). This means various things.

It means excitement and joy and delight in the company of those much loved and seldom seen.
It means stress and exhaustion and complete failure to stay on top of things I really need to stay on top of.
It means Swiss chocolates.
It means a depletion of monetary resources as we wine and dine and celebrate and entertain.

But what it means right now is that the carpets are vacuumed, the kitchen and bathroom are clean, there are flowers on the table**, the beds are made with fresh linen, the oil burners are lit and the air is filled with the happy scent of lavender and expectation.

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* Just how old? Well, he met her on a plane, while he was en route to visiting his dad for the summer. He was 10. It amazes me they are still in touch.
** Note to self: put flowers on the table.

Oh yeah, you got me going, you really got me going

I have been earwormed all week, and now this article shows up. But it misses the most devious earworms of all: those that implant themselves *without* the actual song being heard. Just a few words from the lyrics are enough to kick it off.

Which explains why I've been humming all week, "One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble", even though I haven't actually listened to Chess in years. (More's the pity.) It's because I have been subbing a story on a property development called Oriental City.*

This variation of the "pesky phenomenon" isn't just pesky. It is a dangerous weapon. If only a few words are needed, such words can be slipped quite innocently (or quite mischievously — yes, Vivaldifan, I am looking at YOU) into conversation. This kind of thing can trigger a battle to the death. To the very death, I tell you.

Vivaldifan, I'm gonna get you. One way or another. I'm gonna find you. I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha...

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* [sigh] Okay. If you really need the help:
Bangkok. Oriental City. But the city don't know what the city is getting. The cremedelacreme of the chess world inna - show with everything but Yuuuul Brynner!

Name that shop!

I have a great fondness for peculiar shop names. The punny ones are entertaining enough, but my real favourites are the ones with unusual wording or surprising honesty.

In the former camp, we have:
"Yotgrot — purveyors of old and new marine stuff" (Paarden Eiland, Cape Town)
There's a sense that the creativity ran out just one word too soon, but that only adds to the appeal.

and:
"Superbonbon — mighty restaurant of wondrousness!" (formerly of Melville, Johannesburg; now sadly retired)
It was indeed wondrous, for the 13 months it was open. The menu, featuring "quail! saketini! coco pops!", put dessert at the top, so you knew how much space to leave. But alas, the owners got bored and went on to do something else.

And in the "surprising honesty" camp, we have a couple of hairdressers in London:
"Spendloads Please!" (somewhere in south London on the number 42 bus route, I think)

and the more worrying:
"It Will Grow Back" (Dalston, north London).

Anybody else?

Life isn't real till it's blogged

From a recent conversation at Chez Scroobious. This conversation was of a personal nature, so you'll have to use your imagination.*

BELOVED: [warm and intimate comment]
SCROOBIOUS: [rather less serious riposte]

[Thoughtful pause]

B: You are NOT blogging that.
S: Damn.

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* Possibly scraping new depths of blogdom here: "insert your own content".

More of the obvious

Alcohol is bad for you.

"I'll just go for one drink," I said. "Won't be home late," I said.

So how exactly did I come to be waking up on Saturday morning, still drunk, with the knowledge that I had given everyone I work with* an intense back rub, possibly bitten one of them (memory's a little hazy on this point...) been kicked out of two pubs** — and now I had to get out of bed, clean the house and throw a party?

Alcohol is fun.

Officially a braai is all about devouring enough dead cow to feed a village. Traditionally it's also about the beer. But at Chez Scroobious, it's largely about the pitchers of gin and elderflower. Cue startled ejaculations: "What have you put in the water?!"

Keep pouring. Stand back and watch the conversation reach new elevations of absurdity. (Did you know that the 9th Commandment was "Thou shalt not adulterate lemmings?" I have it on the very best authority. Also, the airport at Zurich is named Testicles.***)

Expensive alcohol is more fun and less bad...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an imbiber of gin will soon wax lachrymose. It has occurred to me, though, that this hasn't happened for a while. Since... mm... since about when I stopped drinking any gin that isn't Bombay Sapphire, in fact. Most excellent discovery! It tastes exquisite, it smells amazing and it is depressant-free. How cunning!

...but even the nicest alcohol will have after-effects.



And then I had to make lunch for my dad and his new husband.****

PS. Big warm hugs to my lovely, lovely guests. Especially the unexpected ones. I like to think that if it weren't for that last train issue, we could have all still been in the garden, and that would be fine with me.

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* Or at least, those of them who had come out.
** Because they were closing. Not because we were so badly behaved. Honest.
*** That part is actually true. Sort of.
**** I really haven't been keeping the record up to date, have I?

Don't worry, there's still plenty of silly

I give you: the Minty Fizzy Fountains of Wonder.* (Sound optional, but infinitely preferable.)



And in the "I don't believe my eyes" category, try this optical illusion. Unless you're colour blind. Then it probably won't work so much.

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* Source, with more details.

I hang my head in shame

Have I really posted only three times since the start of the month?

And we're now halfway through?

Egad.

Now, a little market research. If my head is full of non-typical Scrivenings thoughts — thoughts to do with running a business when you are not a businessperson; thoughts to do with maybe almost changing the world, or at least my little world — and they're largely squeezing out the more trivial and entertaining stuff you come here for*, and I maybe want to write some of them down, if only to tidy my head up a bit...

Do you think I should put them safely out of the way in a specially designated blog box where they won't confuse you? Or should I babble on here, achieving the double whammy of boring you half the time when you want something silly, and the other half of the time, boring the potential wouldbe ontroppernures who might find something interesting in my less silly somethings?

I don't like compartmentalising, see. It didn't work so well for my knitting blog.** But I suspect it makes better sense.

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* Maybe. Do you? I have no idea why you come here. All three of you.
** Of course now I have a new knitting blog, but that's different.

33 minutes

I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now.

Obviously I realise that is ridiculous. I realise that 5km is just a warm-up for many people.
I realise that 33 minutes is far from a great time. I realise that I was running waaaaay at the back. I realise all that.

But a few months ago I couldn't run for even five minutes. And my target for tonight was just to keep running. Maybe to finish within 45 minutes.

So I'm feeling pretty good.

I think I deserve some Milo.

In which Scroobious states the obvious

Summer is more fun when you’re on holiday.

In an unprecedented synchronicity of happy things, last week saw me on leave, Beloved on leave, other commitments cleared away in the first half of the week (mostly) and *gasp!* the tangible start of summer.

This was good. We spent a day (and a fair amount of poondz) making Beloved dizzy, nauseous and headachey, and then all better, and then dizzy some more. My idea of a good, good time. (Although ideally less of the headache and more of the dizzy.) And we spent a couple of days in the mellow goldenness of Bath – inspecting Austen settings, stomping around hilltops, dallying in boats and so on. Terribly pretty, Bath, but where’s the beach? Or mountain? Surely it should have at least one of those?*

And all this happened in lovely, balmy sunshine – the first time I have ever holidayed in the UK in good weather**. Getting increasingly balmy as the week progressed, really. It was great while pootling about on the river, but not so much back in London, trying to do some work. Thank goodness it started raining again, eh?

Cars are useful.

Pre-Bath, we picked up a smart little toy that totally didn’t belong to us. (Honest, mum, it just followed me home!) Frances, kind soul, took us to Ikea and back within about two hours.*** And to the garden centre, where we stocked up on a bunch of plants**** and bark chips and cowshit. It was all so easy. Most of the time I don’t miss having a car at all – parking, petrol, maintenance, insurance, traffic, no thanks – but, well… it were nice while it lasted.

A woman’s work is never done.

So I’ve just had a week’s leave, of which only three days in total were actual holiday. I should be all caught up. I should have a glistening clean house, an excitingly worked over garden*****, an empty desk, a lot of big ticks on my to-do list.

Not so much. (Although the garden’s not doing too badly. Yay rain!)

And because I can never bring myself to say no to work, and because everyone in the whole world seems to want to come to Londonville at the same time, it’s going to be, like, the middle of July before I have a chance to get ahead.

*Sighs self-pityingly.*

Exercise is hard.

That 10km run I signed up for is rapidly approaching. Tonight I’m doing a 5km as some kind of twisted test run. Now, I was doing very nicely with my training for quite a while, but the past few weeks have been… busy. It’s been hard to keep it up. I’m honestly not sure I can run for even 5km. Hours of gardening, yes, trekking over hills, fine, I’ve done plenty of that, but running is a bit more of a challenge.

This is me girding my loins for public humiliation.

[Insert mental image here.]
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* My homesick is coming out in funny ways and with increasing frequency.
** This might have something to do with our habit of taking off without much planning, whenever we suddenly have a few days. In, er, November, say, or February…
*** I do expect you to be impressed at this point that we were even able to get out of the shop within two hours. Seriously. We made it out with just the three things we went in for (plus, er, one thing that wasn’t on the list, but was on a mental problem-to-be-solved list, so that’s okay). It was sale week and everything. We beat the Ikea quicksand. Applause, please.
**** Which are only going to die within a couple of weeks, but a girl’s gotta try. *Shrugs philosophically.*
***** Wow. That sounds kinda saucy, doesn’t it? Lucky garden.

In bed with a sexy redhead

She's so shiny.

Not very slim, true, but terribly clever. And so cute.

More importantly, I can now blog from the comfort of bed. With cats. And sunshine. I can't tell you what an improvement this is.