dithering

The hot weather returns. A final burst of summer clouts us.

At 8:45 I front at Centrelink for my next contact interview. The interviewer is a drab woman with red-rimmed eyes and the charisma of a hibernating turtle. She regards me suspiciously. I tell her I’m working harder at getting a job than if I worked full-time. She tells me to come back in a month. What a waste of everyone’s time.

I complete a document for the templates project and speak to my project leader. She’s pregnant, suffering a horrid first trimester, and working at home. In the past fortnight she’s reviewed all the first drafts. Some are brilliant, she says, and some she has taken to with a big stick. I’m not precious; I’m sure the stick is deserved.

After lunch I finish reading my novel. It’s a Pulitzer-Prize-winning disappointment. The story hangs together loosely, too loosely for me. It’s New York chic, literary chic, I guess, and seems to go straight over my unsophisticated, unchic head. For aficionados of the NY music scene it’s probably laugh a minute stuff. One or two glorious similes don’t warrant a Pulitzer.

I fret about the five-minute presentation I must present as part of my interview for the mega-bucks job next Wednesday, but fritter away the late afternoon as the house succumbs to the heat. Between now and Wednesday I’ll have precious little preparation time when a trip to Sydney is about to occupy three days.

Despite a growing urgency I find myself dithering. Such a lovely word; such a lovely thing to do if you have the time. I don’t. Then I decide I’m not dithering, but cogitating. The presentation circulates in my brain, snippets of pithy sentences swirling in mix.

Toward eleven at night my good woman comes for a sleepover. We have not seen each other for days and she’s very welcome. She brings a custard and sour cherry tart. The miracle is that she didn’t bake it; it comes from a German food chain and is utterly delicious.

    

Rock on.