Unauthorised Interruption: When Credit’s Long Overdue

This morning I got out of bed with a mood swing the size of London Eye on my back, just waiting to happen. It’s been building up for a long time. We’re not talking hours, days or weeks. Not even months. It’s been years.

Sanity flew over the cuckoo’s nest last week but I pretended all was well. It began with an innocent remark and somebody blew it out of proportions and now it’s this huge monkey (would that be a gorilla?) that I can’t shake (why shake a monkey in the first place?).

Friday I was asked if my colleague would hang out at a local book fair during the weekend so Ace and J-Man could bump into her (code for: chat her up). I reacted all adult by replying Ace: How come you like her better than me? I never got an answer to that. However, I began to backtrack and saw a pattern emerge…

The dots are for building up suspense, in case you’re wondering…

…

Oh, that didn’t look right. Now it seems like I’ve left something out. It could be an important titbit that I just couldn’t bother to share with you. Now you will be thinking about that for the next couple of…nanoseconds.

I gorge on people I like. Look at me (scroll if my picture isn’t in sight): even on a good day I’m chubby and despite what Spidey would say, it’s not because of all the sweets, cakes and crisps I’ve devoured lately. Well, not entirely. When I like people, I would happily make all their problems disappear and hand over the world to them if I could. In return I would ask for absolutely nothing. This is how lame I get when I like people.

So I network to make people happy
And I name drop to make their projects happen
Furthermore I try and entertain them while I pine away dreaming about a future with kids and Sunday dinners at mum’s with J-Man being this fucking polite son-in-law that mum loves to bits and for Christmas she showers him with presents that he never knew that he wanted but now loves and he hugs her goodnight and finally her screwed up daughter has found somebody that isn’t as weird as she and even better, he has a great name and he’s not a Muslim and he speaks her language and he’s born to be likable and he honestly likes Cliff Richard so they have this great connection that her daughter has never had with her and everything is brilliant. Until she begins to ask for grandchildren.

Where was I before insanity took over...

I like, therefore I go bonkers. Okay, I’m back on track now.

What I do is running around in circles. You need help? I’m right here. Have you run out of time for your deadline? Let me help. My projects? Oh, I can work on them after hours or during the weekend or my holiday. No problem. You’re stressed today? Can I do something to alleviate that? You’re hot today (oh my gawd, he’s hot e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y!)? Here’s a scoop of ice cream through your email, hope you feel better now. You need whichever before the end of the day? I’ll fax, mail, bike, rocket it over to you immediately.

Anything to make your lives easier.

And in return for running around in circles is the prize: I’m now a headless chicken. And what do we do with headless chickens? We eat them. Psycho-chicken, gook gook gook gooook goooook (you need to youtube that song, otherwise it doesn’t make sense…otherwise????). But due to my chubbiness I’m too high in fat and cholesterol and therefore not one of the dishier dishes.

Or put more bluntly: I’m not the one people ask to see at the local book fair.

Despite the namedropping and networking and after hours work. However, if people can invoice me for it, then they like socialising with me.

And to top it all off:

To end a day of museum, lunch and spiffy conversation in a mixture of several foreign languages and hand gestures (because that’s how intellectual and complicated I am when I hang out with TheForeignWoman), I go to the supermarket on my way home from town.

I have on normal clothes for once. No helmet, no running nose, no smeared makeup (although that’s a killer look for me), no sense of humour. I try and catch a glimpse of the person behind the check out but all I can see is this head of short fair hair because somebody has the nerve to block my view with the excuse to pay for the items. Shesh. So I take a basket and go inside.

Somebody asks where the almonds are located. By the milk, is the short and brutish answer. I shop…and visualise where the almonds are. I like almonds, too well. A young man walks up to me, looks me in the eyes and asks me where the almonds are. Next aisle, I answer. Oh, he replies and when he finds them he yells hooray. I shop on.

There’s barely any customers in the supermarket this late. No lines and I put all my items up…and pay. And just then, in that second, I realise that Ken is behind the check out and I close my eyes and non verbally yell stupid stupid stupid and take my VISA back and am too surprised to put two words together and the world just crashes.

Of course I should have put two and two together when I heard the brutish answer. This is Ken’s trademark. Quiet, swift and if forced to speak: abrupt.

So I pick up my items. Stuff I need, stuff I crave, stuff I could live without. Here’s a run down:
Fresh pineapple (lovely)
Seedless grapes, green (sweet and lovely)
3 rolls of milk chocolate filled with soft toffee (for my imaginary sweet tooth that’s come too much into life recently)
4 litres of Pepsi Max (I’m addicted, help me somebody, I need intervention and stat)
Halls (sugar free) with orange, lemon and lime flavour (abnormally delish)
Pork rinds (disgusting!)

I put my stuff in a bag and I glance over at Ken midways. He’s occupied with customers. They’re so lucky! When I finish bagging it all, I take the bag and throw him another glance. This time he looks back and this time I am sure I get a reaction. It’s “what the hell are you looking at!”

I stand there with my bag full of goodies. In my best clothes because I knew I would be hanging out in intellectual and cool places all day. And I know that my hair looks great. Or at least not too haystacky.

And I wonder if he would like to go out with my colleague as well.

Dear Diary

Today I feel extremely lonely. But that’s okay. I am the most entertaining person I know so I can make myself giggle. Ha ha.

XXOO
FN