Thirsty Thursday: I can’t stand people that complain about the weather, but...
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law.
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law
THIRSTY THURSDAY THIRTY
I can’t stand people that complain about the weather, but then again, I was born in the 70s so I never really had much truck with positive self-talk, so: this weather is stupid and should be banned.
We had one sunny, lovely day. I opened all the windows and did heaps of washing and luxed and got my little nest into tip top order. I made lists and plans and thought jolly thoughts about the next couple of months and fun and sunshine and good cheer. We all walked around barefoot and listened to the first cicada of the summer and cheered.
It was like something out of the telly except nobody hugged because now when I hug the big one he says it’s creepy.
Now the weather is shit again and it’s windy and rainy and trees are falling down and I have all these reasonably priced cucumbers and tomatoes but feel like I should be making a casserole. And now all of my lovely, dear little plans for the next wee while feel like monumental tasks and I’m imagining standing in the field in the rain at the school picnic and running through puddles to pick up the little one on the last day of school. The kid has only worn his shorts once this term and even then he insisted on wearing thick woolly socks with them. My sunglasses are dusty and I gave away my hat. This is all stupid.
At least I’ve managed to break the back of my Christmas shopping thanks to my mum who spent four weeks warning me that everything would be gone if I waited past November to start my shopping, so we went to town and I taught her to use the parking machine at the mall. Again. This time instead of watching me do it, I made her push the buttons and every time she asked a question I said “well, what do you think” in a calm and measured way (it was new lady sticker day).
Apparently there are a huge number of people in their 70s who are too afraid to go and use the mall car park because it is touch-screen and ticketless, she tells me, and I resisted the urge to ask if this is because you don’t have to pull the tail of a prehistoric bird in order to make the arm go up (again, yay stickers) and she said, possibly reading my mind, that one day I, too, would be baffled by technology and she is sad she won’t be there to see it.
Once again the stickers helped by allowing me to hide the fact that I had spent a great deal of time, only days previously, feverishly searching Reddit and working out how to get rid of some space on my middle-aged laptop so that I could finally update the poor thing.
I often think she believes I took computer classes at school (the internet at the time being a nascent bulletin board for nerds) and that I am instantly able to use any piece of tech, and obviously hasn’t seen me screeching at the children to be absolutely silent while I try to log in to some bloody buggery website to retrieve a vital piece of information or to buy a pissing video game (new sticker day tomorrow, sorry).
Today I did have a mini-win, as I braved the enormous bush spider that lives in our mailbox and managed to retrieve the mail. Mr mr sent me a picture of it when he took the dog for a walk yesterday and was obviously too frightened of the thing to put his own hand in. So, this morning after drop-off I parked by the mailbox (tres rural, no?) and I went and banged on the top of the mailbox and shouted “Get out of there David you creep” (all nasty creepy things now being called David, obvs) and then quickly opened the flap, grabbed the mail and threw it all on the ground. A nice couple with a nice dog skirted past me nervously, and then my dog saw their dog and went nuts in the car and I yelled at him to shut up and said, “by hokey pokey”, which is what my mum used to say to our dog when it was naughty, and the people picked up their pace and scuttled down the hill away from the crazy lady, her nasty barky dog and the skid mark politician that lives in their mailbox.
Accurate about David lol