Strange Days Re-visited or, My Life is Weird

It's been one of those special weeks, which if you know me means - yep, Janet Doing Strange Things By Accident Again. (Let's not even go into the previous week, which included me stuck on the front door like a deranged limpet first thing in the morning, and the infamous Iron incident.)

Monday morning started off with me tripping over my own two feet as I turned around after closing my window. Nothing unusual about that; if I had a week without falling over something, my friends and family would start eyeing me strangely and check for possible doppelgänger activity.
I landed face-down on my bed, which was good; I've missed the bed on previous occasions, and it hurts. Once you've passed a certain age, you just don't bounce well any more, no matter how much extra padding gravity adds to your body.

So I sighed to myself, picked myself up, checked to make sure my hand-bag was intact, and froze in horror. Somehow, I had managed to drop-kick my Tenda wireless connector (which was about three feet away from where my feet decided they were no longer on speaking terms with co-ordination, and several inches off the floor plugged into the PC) and it was now in three separate pieces. Two sad little pieces of plastic, and a bit of circuit board twisted like a piece of half-sucked toffee. I spent a few forlorn minutes trying to fit them together, like a sorrowful monkey with a mismatched Lego set. Then I gave up and went to work, and did the dance of  Please, Please Let Amazon Have It In Stock.

Tuesday was fairly good. Got the new Tenda, managed to install it with a minimum of cursing, and only one moment of panic when I thought I had blown up the internet and ended life as we know it.

Wednesday included walking into a wall and making a very bad mistake regarding junk food, which had about as much in common with a real hamburger as I do to a rabid hamster. Then I got on a train to Glasgow, and inhaled the delightful aroma of large wet dog on a rope all the way there. The dog was under the seat in front of me and slept blissfully the entire way.

Thursday afternoon meant coming back from Glasgow, accompanied by the most impressive drama queen I've encountered on public transport. I have no idea what the woman's name is. I can tell you she had three kids with her, seven pieces of luggage included something coloured Pepto Bismal pink, with wheels, an ear-ache, a headache, a sore back, a possible divorce, and a voice that carried the length of the train-car. The relief of finally arriving in London was overshadowed by discovering that the tube line I needed had delays, and that somebody in the public loo had fought a brave but ultimately losing fight with a large curry, and by the time I lurched through my front door at 11:45p.m. I was feeling mildly homicidal.

Friday started off badly. I don't like being late. My body had other ideas, and I slept through every alarm I have (four of them). I staggered into work, apologised, and spent most of the morning feeling like I'd been bitch-slapped by the stupid fairy. I think I can honestly say that I've reached the stage in life where I need my sleep, and if I don't get enough I suffer a mass die-off of brain capacity. There isn't enough coffee on the planet for me to function for the next 8 hours.

So I got home and pretty much grunted my through dinner, passed out cold, and discovered a fairly unpleasant surprise after midnight when I traipsed down to the loo and was greeted by a large striped spider that had claimed squatters rights beside the bowl. In my defense, what I did next was possibly justifiable because (a) both the inhabitants of the house are arachnaphobes (b) my cousin has the most piercing scream outside of a Hammer horror I have ever heard and (c) it had been a long week, and the last thing I needed to top it off was acute constipation.
We have (had) a fairly nifty smelling can of vanilla air-freshener, which apparently striped spiders find extremely offensive. It scuttled under the skirting board and stared out at me reproachfully. I think it was coughing.

I went back to bed and tried not to think about a vanilla-scented beastie clambering up to my room, bent on revenge. Maybe wearing a little red bandanna and waving an Uzzi.  It's been that kind of a week.

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J H Sked is the author of WolfSong , Basement Blues , Die Laughing , and Quarter the Moon  and a contributor to Sweet Dreams, all of which are on Amazon as ebooks.