The gate, the slugs, the bell and the lizard

So, as I was writing my post last week about the lizard in the bell, the guy arrived to fix our electric gate into the driveway (which also was not working). We stayed warmly in the kitchen supping on our Friday evening sundowners while he went out into the ever-darkening dusk to tinker and toil on the little plastic box which houses Gate Headquarters and (should, but often doesn't) make the gate open and close at the push of a little blue button.

Twenty minutes later he came in looking suitably handymanny with oily hands and a happy smile. He had removed the family of slugs who had taken up residence. They, apparently, had happily moved in and were leaving their belongings (slime?) around Gate Headquarters resulting in the inoperation of gate. Hmmm, should I be worried that I seem to be collecting creatures in electrical goodies that should possibly not be doubling as housing for said creatures?

P.S. Turns out the bell, too, was once again inhabited by a baby lizard - who would've thought that generations of lizards would gravitate back to the same 'house'! He is now living in amongst the creepers on the back wall. I hope he's still as cosy.

The bell and the lizard

Our bell is not working. This makes it hard for people visiting us to get in. Logical really. It has been a week since the bell broke (although it did work briefly in between not working, don't ask - I don't know). The last time this happened we took the little boxy thing apart and found that a small lizard had moved in and his worldly goods that came with him were preventing the bell from working properly (could've been his tiny lizard suitcase, or maybe one of his little lizard socks causing a lack of connection between one wire and another, or something).

This time, however, there seems to be no sign of lizardy interference. Biggest problem though, is the fact that I got the guy to come and fix it and he was supposed to come this morning and I think he may have, but... We didn't realise he was here and he couldn't ring the bell to let us know he was here. Oh bugger. So, it seems we'll have another weekend of people having to squeal at us from the gate to get in. Do you think the neighbours may start complaining?

The joys of being Thirty-Something

I have discovered a wonderful thing about being thirty two and a bit - me and my fellow thirty-somethings are in our prime. The books that are being published are about us: our childhoods, our angst-filled teenage years, our slightly-to-completely-messed up lives now. It's fabulous. There's just something really satisfying about being able to relate.

I met up with a friend who I haven't seen for probably three years (at least - I find it increasingly hard to keep a measure of time) over the weekend. In the missing time he has found himself a wonderful girlfriend with whom he has just bought a house, has got a relatively stable job and seems content. He was, basically, all over the place before. Now he's joined the ranks of many of the rest of the thirty-somethings... finally settling down and doing what our parents did in their twenty-somethings. Why the shift to later life?

Good heavens, I'm all over the place. My mind has had one of those weekends, okay, months of wandering off by itself, like a naughty puppy, for extended periods until finally I realise that I've been staring into space for half an hour and my office mate is looking at me strangely and tapping me on the shoulder. I wonder if it means I'm lacking something in my diet. Could a chocolate deficiency have this effect?

Voyeurism

One wonders sometimes at how time flies. It is June. Like I said in my little blurb above, it is highly unlikely that I will update this blog daily. I am trying for weekly. I have a whole day off school a week which I have done specifically to provide me time to do such things (most importantly the paying kind but also the fun bits, like this). So far though, my three Fridays off have provided me with extra time for a leisurely Friday lunch in the sun with a good friend and a bottle of wine (it’s her off work season and she thinks we should do this every Friday – no, okay, maybe… rubber arm? Me?); some extra shopping time and, on one of them, a couple of hours of wage-paying work. Hmm, looking at that I don’t feel so bad really. One out of three seems fine. I figure I should just put up my hourly fee by three times and it’ll be perfect. I can be so clever sometimes, my heart swells with pride.

The whole regular blogging thing, though, is what has held me back from blogging for so long. It’s the pressure you see, to keep the momentum going. I have been a blog voyeur for years. There was a whole group of people on 20six whose daily lives I followed for, literally, years, never commenting for some reason. My heart broke with them and then healed (Daisy), I fell in love, with them (Late Bland – if there’s only one you read, this should be it, for sure. Read it from the archives forward), I went through their pregnancies with them (Jojo), I have followed the adventures of a beaver and his not-so-clever-but-most-fabulous reptilian friend, Steve and their creator (Beaver and Steve – I may, even, be in love with Steve). These are just four of a group of them who seem to be close friends. Some moved blog sites, me dragging along behind, like a ghostly chain. I still go in to check up if Late has updated yet, and still get sad every time I see he hasn’t. His is the only one I ever commented on, in the hope that it would make him come back.

That all makes me sound a bit weird. Hmm, voyeuristic is not the word but, if you read them, you’ll understand. Also, I’m a good multi-tasker and have been known to answer a phone call, read a blog, write an e-mail, drink a cup of tea and put a batch of muffins in the oven – all at the same time (okay, okay, I don’t even have a recipe for muffins, I lied… but the rest is a true story, really). So I see them as a way to keep my ever-racing mind entertained.

Anyway, this whole blog story got me wondering whether a certain type of voyeurism is not only okay, but actually bloody wonderful?