days like these

Last night I facilitate a special owners corporation meeting in my lounge room. We have no manager, bank account, or unanimity about how to proceed. Dan and Jim have almost come to blows in the driveway about other issues, and Joyce can get pretty feisty. Fio wants to pay no management fees, his English is nil, and Alvena defers to her incomprehensible husband.

I run a calm meeting, reframe Jim’s “dispute” into a discussion, and we achieve a nice outcome that moves us all to better understandings of the issues and each other. I go to bed relieved and sleep peacefully under a purple sarong after a hot and muggy day.

I rise this morning to some relief of the pain above my left buttock that’s increased over three days. I can’t lie, sit, stand, or walk without great discomfort. Yesterday’s residual warmth radiates from the walls. The Bureau promises a hotter day with even higher humidity.

The morning is a blast: things unfold nicely. Before breakfast I fire up the interweb and launch an email into cyberspace: is the mentor training I’m running tonight in Castlemaine still on? At nine I meet with my co-presenter for an upcoming two-day workshop in Sydney. I’m excited to be reprising last year’s well-received gig. I write the sexuality educator job application with a brilliant first-time cover letter and proof of my godliness packed into a one-page narrative addressing the selection criteria. Mike emails that tonight’s Castlemaine gig is off. I top it off with a lunch of mushroom risotto my good woman made the other night.

Later I wake from an after-lunch siesta in a muck sweat on the couch, my head leaden. Sid the cat lies stupefied on the floor; the JRT hangs limply out of his box-bed. The airless house slumps on its haunches.

The phone rings. Bullyboy Jim tells me he’s spoken to “his man”, and his man, a property manager, reckons I should pay higher fees than the other units because my lot area is greater. The last air in my day seeps out of me.

I raise every blind and open every window to get some oxygen into the house. Gloom descends instead and a fierce electrical storm bursts. Thunder rattles the panes, water cascades over the gutters and mocks the temporary drain protecting my front door.

I decide to turn the computer off but it dies as I reach for the switch. My back aches.

Later I drive to my good woman’s place. I feel depressed and in need of psychotherapy. She tells me everyone at her workplace began the day wrung out and it just got worse. It’s the weather, she says.

“It’s life,” I reply. “It’s Jim, it’s not having a meaningful job, it’s being sixty, it’s constant pain in my back.” She likes it when I whinge, and tells me so. We laugh.

Rock on.