Downhill Jack & Jill

We held a Xmas "dop & tjop braai" Saturday evening. To those who don't understand, it means a barbeque. It happened in a lot of darkness in the garden dimly lit with pretty fairy-throng (thong?) lights, lanterns and one glow-worm. A worm with a bulb in its arse. It was a male as it was such a long worm. The animal family caused some entertainment as the curious cats bobbed amongst the guests legs and the two dogs nicked bones from plates. Why does ones dogs behave badly when people visit?

Apart from realizing too late that we needed more light in our garden, LOTS of other things happened prior to this tranquil setting.

My cell phone drowned Friday night. We never shared an intimate relationship as I never quite took to it. However, the sudden departure left an unexpected gaping hole in my life as for once I really needed that phone more than anything on Saturday. How could it let me down like that?! Desperation has many faces and one is to smack a nasty, tatty lifeless piece of Chinese clutter to pieces on the kitchen counter. It could have revived the dead phone, but I did remember that smacking might also not have the complete desired effect.

I miss my phone. I’m lost without it. I doubt it ever wants to come back to me. It’s gone for good.

Do you know, if I was a bad person all these bad things could be blamed on another entity who ventured across our lawn with an unlabelled bottle of red wine Friday evening. I’m not particularly fond of people arriving uninvited with unlabelled half-full bottles of off-tasting wine. That is so cheap. Disrespectful. So I ended up blending my white with red and switched on the irrigation system and forgot about my phone which I've left jsut outside the backdoor. Circumstantial evidence was discovered the next morning that my cell had been in the wrong place at the wrong time as it sometimes goes in life. What used to be a stupid working phone was now a useless soaked piece of moldy pulp and junk.

I’m not sure if I can vent my annoyance in a general direction, but anyone who plans a visit to Acorn Cottage in the future: Don't ever arrive with an opened, unbalanced unlabelled wine. Never. You’ll regret it.

The rest of Saturday left me lost in a whirlwind of inevitable doom and gloom. I don’t believe in the 13th bad luck and it strikes me as very odd that it seemed to have been waiting for me. The day spiralled like an upside-down see-saw with some electricity and hosepipe trippings, dogs demolishing a 3rd new spray-head in the 3rd consecutive week, cleaning up the lawn, getting on chairs to reach behind the top-shelve in the kitchen and stepping on the arthritic cat’s tail, a grub of dry bread, a growl here, some good music, a fused temper there or a philandering sister arriving just on time to avoid doing a stitch of work prior to the party...

There was a lot of self-pep-talk under the shower just before our first guests arrived.

The party went well. In case you wondered...

Then yesterday morning happened: Been taking care of the neighbour’s toothless dog a day or two and left him in their place too long yesterday morning. Had to deal with BIG SHIT. Resulting in blocking their toilet. I wonder how a 10 c piece could have landed amongst all that mess between the two bedrooms...

Most of us know the song of Jack and Jill going up and down the hill to fetch a bucket of water. Only difference this weekend was that I had no hill climbing, neither fetching any water and trust me: I’m done. One simply doesn’t have to dance across hills to the sound of music this time of year and the thought of it alone leaves me limp with a certain degree of cross-eyed lethargy.

I so want to curl up under a rose-bud-bush and forget about everything, especially the part of buckets, water, phones, and mountains of work to be conquered.