One day this week, as I was cleaning my teeth, I discovered I could make my boobs go up and down, independently of each other and at the same time, using nothing but the sheer herculean strength of my gym-nascent pectoral muscles. This is no mean feat. Each stupendous globe weighs as much as a cat. I know because I got out the kitchen scales. Then I put Pharrell on and we had a dance. I even Vibered the Hubster at work to let him know the good news. He sent me a nice emoticon flower. But like Tinder, kale smoothies and motos in the rain, even getting happy with your chesticles becomes old hat fast. In case I had something more diverting and life affirming up my sleeve, I skimmed through My List Of Things To Do Today:
- Pay big blue water bottle dude.
- Buy new pasta strainer.
- Buy paint. Paint over grubby fingermarks from air-con repair guy.
- Buy bleach + toothbrush/scrub grout.
- Toenails?
I looked at my toenails with a question mark. I’d made my List in bed the night before, just after two stiff bloody marys and a cheeky Xanax left over from New Year’s. What was the roadmap for my wayward talons? Paint? Cut? Instagram? Was it a trick question? Stumped, I filed them away in the enervated mañana basket of my mind. Back at the List, I was dismayed to find four out of the five Things To Do needed pants on. Mission critical to three of them was actually stepping outside. I opened the window and put my hand in the outdoors. Barely 10 o’clock in CharmingVille and hot as the hinges of Hell. I had to find something at least mildly interesting and moderately useful to do that included icy cold air-con. For once I decided it couldn’t be playing Facebook, taking online personality tests or wrecking a third blender trying to make hummus off the internet.
Soon after I was colour coding my shoes and listening to a free sample of Rob Lowe’s new audio book to kill time before Law and Order. I plucked my eyebrows. I looked in the fridge 500 times. Ours beeps if you leave the door open too long. I spent a while seeing how far I could close it before it stopped beeping. Turns out it only stops when fully closed. Good to know. The Bunster was panting a bit having spent half an hour on the balcony eating his own poo. He seemed to be enjoying it. But I gave him an ill-conceived sponge bath anyway, which ended in me asking Dr Google if you can catch rabies from rabbits, via a long detour through some disturbing cat gifs.
It was in the middle of this flurry of activity that the power went out.
This was not the bad part. We’ve all been around long enough to hear the collective groans of an overheated, entertainment-free neighbourhood reverberate down each searing street. And the cheers as, a sweaty hour later, everything turns back on.
The bad part began when, during the quiet left behind after electricity is gone, I noticed a hairline crack appearing in the thin veneer of busywork, existential clock-watching and emotional jazz hands I’ve plastered over everything. Ennui and Malaise, those continental nemeses, for the first time accompanied by doleful, snivelling Loneliness, crept through my ever-widening gap. Merde. This hole thing threatened to turn a vaguely promising afternoon quickly and dramatically downhill. I admit I momentarily succumbed and threw myself onto the hard cold tile, blubbing and raging into my neatly rainbowed orthotics. Everybody else is having such a great time. I see their picture on Facebook yukking it up with plenty of sexy offline Brazilian friends on a sunset boat. Or eating smart canapés at yet another important basket-weaving exhibition. Normal people go out to dinner in big laughy groups, stay out after 9, run around the park and discuss the cultural zeitgeist over wheatgrass after yoga.
But as those three killjoys loitered in the corner laughing and pointing as my middle-class, first-world, paper-thin walls came tumbling down, my phone vibrated off the bedside table. It was one of the two-and-a-half people who’d actually leave their house for me, inviting me out for a dinner and a movie, followed by a nightcap and gossip chez them. Those whiny interlopers vanished. I found some pants and vowed that with friends like these, I need more. The thing is to get out amongst it. Even if it’s hot and I’m not Brazilian. I turned to grab my keys and Bunster was back on the balcony, despite the heat, eating his own poo, and smiling right at me. I smiled back. It was, coincidentally, the very moment that the lights went on.
This column was first published in Advisor Issue 124.