Notes from Saturdays

The nurse walks me to a blue examination room, attaches a clip to my index finger and starts asking questions: do you know where you are? what year is it? what month? what day of the week is today? when did the accident happen?  He's kind and sweet. Almost sympathetic. I hold back my tears, embarrassed, and answer them all correctly, I think, although the year comes to me after a long pause & Wednesday is a wild guess. I hardly ever know what the days between Monday & Friday are. Half the time I think Friday is Thursday & for some curious reason 1985 seems to be the year we are in. I say 2021. "I'll show you three pictures and we'll check again in an hour & hopefully you will remember them all. OK?" He holds out 3 black and white illustrations: a cup -the white ones they put out at hotel breakfasts that hold 2 sips of tea, 2 keys on a ring and a bird. I walk back into the waiting room and join the angry sleepy woman with the sling, the messy builde...

I step out of the lift on ground floor and for the fifth time in 3 months look around in complete loss and amazement; which street was it again that Ubers can get into? The ground floor lobby has 2 exists and I am directionally challenged. Nothing looks familiar. I take my chances with the closer exit and walk out into the blinding sunlight dragging my huge site bag on my shoulder. I'm starving, or rather just bored. The cafes around this part of the city are so posh! The restaurants have actually set the lunch tables with wine glasses and rustic-beach ceramic plates. People in suits, handsome, better paid. Nothing like the dingy -almost dodgy- cafes and restaurants around my office where you get a whiff of marijuana with your burrito, people look grubby, unhealthy, overworked & underpaid if not homeless & on benefit. I spot a cool looking cafe. The guy behind the glass cabinet has unkempt almost hippie-like hair. I decide they won't mind my dirty site boots. I get in, ...

I believe we don't tell others how stupid we think they are often enough. We have no problem telling them they are wrong, rude, mean or ridiculous but with idiocy, we hold back. And I'm not sure why. I seriously wish people told me when I was being stupid, because they ARE thinking it and they are telling OTHERS about it. Why not to myself? Do we think idiocy is out of people's control? Do we hold back the same way we don't blame people for their birthplace, height or size of their nose? Because it's not. Saying stupid things is a choice not an unfortunate genetic sequence. For example, when I've had a terrible sore throat and a runny nose and someone tells me "Take a Cold & Flu, it will PREVENT it, or You will wake up fine, or Have more mulled wine..." I need to be able to say "That is factually wrong & total nonsense".  I told No. 21 the other day she was rude and she said "I've reached an age when I can be rude if I feel i...

Photo is taken on a different day . I must have stepped on some ginormous universal toe because the past 2 days have come right out of Hell Catalog. And it was right in the middle of this hell that I realized I don’t really want to die.  Whenever I get frustrated -which is every day lately- I say “Oh! I wish I was dead”. True! I sometimes want to not exist. But I don’t want to go through the experience of ending. As if I wish I could just vanish. Never having existed. Again, lazy. Tonight, I faced what could potentially kill me and I realized that's not really what I meant!  I was driving in the middle of nowhere in the dark with the golden white moon as big as a tree on my right, which meant frosty road. All that stood between me and the black freezing lake on the left were some lousy timber posts, 2 stretched cables and the yellow frost bitten grass. At every sharp bend I thought “This is not how I want to die! not in complete darkness on a road with no reception and no cars...

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table, peeling a pile of onions for the onion soup, and as the pile of peeled and chopped onions gets larger and the air over my head thicker with onion tear gas, I wonder how onions with such humble backgrounds and foul emissions secured themselves a solid seat on the international cuisine board. Who would have thought? I wonder that about people too, humble backgrounds, foul emissions, secure seats. I wipe an onion tear. The house is covered in a thick layer of dust and lint. I don't see it all week until Saturday morning. That's when everyone in the house kinda flops over the finish line after the 40-hour marathon of business and professionalism; We finally make it over the line of WEEKEND, we drop and when we finally raise our heads and look around, we notice every possible surface is covered in clothes, washed, to be ironed, unfolded and worn. The kitchen is tired. I slowly plan the weekend menu. Reunite with the local community through ...

I'm sitting here in this new navy blue dress that I absolutely didn't need but bought anyway. I really liked it & it covers my ginormous thighs quite perfectly. It was in a way my farewell to clothes shopping as I transition into this new phase of my existence.  As all great life stories go, it all started with a sleepless night drenched with a tremendous amount of overthinking, reflecting and self-analysing at what could at best be estimated as 60% of my normal cognitive capacity. I was depressed, exhausted and totally panicking.  Of course, I didn't decide to transition into this new phase of my existence based on 60% brain activity. Even at 60% I'm pretty damn logical.  I finally got the fuck into sleep. Woke up the next day. Ran to the bus stop. Messaged No. 6 and ran my plan past her. She's far more logical with my shit show of a life, as we all are. We agreed on a revised draft of the plan & it's being actioned starting... as usual... this Monday! ...

I feel rotten. It's been a slow and gradual development, like that of moisture creeping up your walls. By the time black mould & bulging paint appear you're looking at months even years of seeping dampness, some rain, some your disgusting broken sewage pipe buried under the floors. What I'm trying to say is it's never a sudden turn of events. There's always a history, and you have plenty of signs: When you hear your new manager is 4 years younger than you. When you find out every single aspect of the upcoming financial year business plan either irritates you or puts you into a coma. When they group you by grades and all the people at your table look like they just graduated or reached puberty. When the 20-something-year-old colleague of yours asks how old you are, out of the blue.  The fact that you hide your age. When they refer to someone as your boss's favourite. You didn't know your boss had a favourite. Your boss IS your favourite. When you realise ...