I’m having an awesome morning. Awesome in the sense of fucked up.
I wake up and have a sore throat. This confirms the Slavic superstition that sitting in draught gives you cold. Draught happens when you open windows at the opposite ends of the flat. I did that yesterday because of the heat wave. A pretty badass action. My mother would kill me if she saw that. No need though because now my sore throat is effectively killing me.
As I go to the kitchen drawer to get something for my throat, I open the top drawer so carelessly that stuff in the bottom drawer gets caught and falls behind the drawers. There is so little space around the drawers that I can’t possibly fit my arm in and retrieve anything that falls behind them. My arm is practically a bone wrapped in skin, as I’m underweight, but now I probably need to lose weight to fix my drawer problem.
Things fell behind the drawers before. I had a friend who is a cabinet maker come over and dismantle the drawers so I could take the things behind them out. He couldn’t dismantle the drawers because he said he never saw such a fucked up hinge system before, but he could loosen the drawer enough for me to stick my arm behind it. I learned nothing. I overstuffed the drawer again, and now I’m stuck with a drawer that doesn’t close because of the rubbish behind it. It’s literally rubbish because I use my bottom drawer to store recyclables before taking them out.
Sufficiently discouraged, I go to pee only to step into something sticky and wet. The cat missed the toilet. I don’t know what her problem was this time, this only happens when she’s upset, such as when I leave her home alone. It’s her subtle act of revenge. So off I go to get a bucket, rubber gloves and Savo. You wouldn’t know Savo. It’s an aggressive chemical routinely used in Slavic world for cleaning toilets or, alternately, for sniffing. It’s probably illegal in developed countries. Now my whole flat smells like a meth lab. The cat acts like nothing happened.
As I sit with my knees bent and talk on the phone to the suicide line – not an actual suicide line but a friend who serves me as a suicide line – I notice a drop of sweat trickling down my calf. WTF. I don’t sweat. I perspire. And I don’t perspire. Except under the knees when I bend them. It’s disgusting. I unbend my knees and watch the drop roll through the patch of hair on the calf that I missed when shaving. Like I say, it’s disgusting. While the suicide line suggests that I laugh it off, the cat starts to pole dance round my legs. Her tail wipes off the drop I was watching. Show is over. What a fucked up way to start the day.
Mara Eastern 