Life, the Universe, and Sweeping the Floor
Presumably the rest of you have noticed (possibly repeatedly) how much frelling time staying alive takes? I mean the grocery-shopping, laundry-doing, even hellhound-hurtling things.* Sweeping the floor twice a day because it’s spring/summer/autumn/winter and the resident creatures are shedding.** Taking out the garbage. Sorting the garbage first because Hampshire, bless its pointed little county council, recycles. I think we’re number one in the country but I could be wrong***. We also have alternate collection weeks—the dustbin men† come for ordinary rubbish one week and recycled the next week. †† This gives the absent-minded among us great scope for getting it wrong. I am not the only person who has hit on the looking-to-see-which-bin-your-neighbour-has-put-out method: out hurtling hellhounds on collection morning one occasionally sees little bursts and outbreaks of the wrong bin. Fortunately I have great faith in my posh top-of-the-hill neighbour: if he ever put out the wrong dustbin he’d have to fall on his sword.
Today, out here in the real world, away from novel writing, music composing, bell ringing, rose growing, etc, I finally received my new credit card. I have only run one for lo these many years because I want neither the hassle nor the danger: two credit cards, two spending limits. Three credit cards . . . but in the 21st century credit card companies are so paranoid that I’m nearly holding my breath every time I punch in the numbers, expecting it not to go through and instead being encouraged to contact the Fraud Department. ††† So having taken out a National Trust‡ credit card first time I decided on Amnesty International for my second card.‡‡‡ And after the envelope fell through the mail slot in my door it was about another twenty minutes on the phone getting the thing turned on.§ More stupid frelling floor-sweeping time. But I was favourably impressed, even if it’s going to be a royal pain in the behind§§, by the number and variety of security check info they want . . . and even if I have no idea what the name of my first school was. That was over fifty years ago, guys, and I was a military brat: I’m doing well to remember what town it was in.
And then of course I had to test the thing. Testing, testing. I bought five packs of biodegradable dog crap bags.§§§ With my Amnesty credit card. I’m so worthy it hurts.¤
* * *
* I’m tempted to put ‘waiting for Computer Men’ on my list of ordinary, survival-oriented activities. But I won’t.
** Somebody explain to me why creatures still shed heavily in winter.
*** This is not an instant Google success, but the Hampshire county web site claims we’re #1. You don’t really want to look it up, do you? http://www3.hants.gov.uk/waste-and-recycling.htm
† This is not a job I feel strongly must be made equal-opportunity, but it’s true I’ve never seen a woman dustbin man.
†† The best thing was when they started collecting garden rubbish: stuff that ought to go on your compost heap if you had a compost heap. I do have a compost heap at Third House, but here at the cottage you can have a compost bin or you can have a garden, and if you have the bin, what are you going to put in it? I had fantasies for a while of putting a bin where the water butt now is, and replacing that butt with one of the fancy new slimline, takes-no-room, fits-in-a-corner water butts, in a corner where a normal butt would not fit^ . . . But I seem to have planted a rose in that corner instead. Ahem. It’s doing well too. In another year it’ll have blacked out the sitting-room window, like Sleeping Beauty’s briar.^^
^ Oh do stop laughing. ‘Water butt’ is what they’re called.
^^ Hellhound follies. Speaking of sleeping. As I began this post hellhounds began settling down for the evening.+ I was vaguely aware that Darkness seemed curiously restless. He’d go in the crate and pop out again a minute later. Then he’d pace for another minute—and the cottage kitchen is a very small space for pacing—come and stare at me—go back in the crate again—and the cycle would start over. I’m reasonably proof against hellhound stares—as I have to be, to get anything done, like sorting the garbage and writing novels++—but eventually I began to notice that every time he went into the crate there were strange clicking and scrabbling noises.+++ So I slid off my chair to hellhound level to have a look in the crate . . . and discovered Chaos doing a king-of-the-mountain number on top of all the bedding, surrounded by a waste of bare crate floor. —Fast asleep and completely innocent and blameless and pure.
Yes, I could buy a nice padded crate-floor-sized dog bed. And Chaos could eat it again, like he ate the last one(s). I suspect this is another of those things like don’t let your dog chase sheep in the first place, because once he’s found out how much fun it is nothing on earth will break him of the habit. Chaos has found out that padded dog bed floors are full of lovely fluffy floaty white stuff that is such fun to pull out and strew about the place. Arrgh.
+ Having traumatised me satisfactorily over the question of dinner.
++ An interesting parallel.
+++ Thought balloon over Darkness’ head: She can be so slow
††† The good thing is that having your card burst into flames and a deep oracular voice waft out through the smoke with the Fraud Department’s phone number is now such standard credit-card behaviour that no one looks at you funny any more. But you still have to pay, somehow, for anything you want to take away with you.
‡ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/
‡‡ I may have to take out a third card after all, since obviously I should have a critter charity card too. —Presumably everybody has/knows about charity credit cards? .000000000000000001% of what you spend on it gets paid to the charity whose name and logo are on the card. I hadn’t fully thought this through when I applied: Amnesty^ goes through the Cooperative Bank, which has the best green record, including not-strictly-green stuff like treatment of ordinary staff, of all the British banks, and I wanted to use them. And then one of my Amnesty magazines—which I tend to read with one eye shut anyway, because I’m squeamish and easily depressed: I have the same reaction to the Medecins sans Frontieres magazine: I may be the worst kind of wet knee jerk liberal who doesn’t want to know, but at least I am putting my money where my mouth, and my body, aren’t—advertised its credit card with the Coop and I thought, oh, I’ll have one of those. . . . Then follows about six months of computer screw-ups and mad incompetence on the part of yours truly^^ . . . but it’s here at last. And . . . somehow I wasn’t expecting the Amnesty International part to be so . . . conspicuous. Can I really flash this thing in public? I don’t like handling barbed wire even on plastic. And when do charity credit cards become an ‘I’m more worthy than you’ game? Is it okay to buy chocolate and All Stars with a worthy credit card? Hmmm.
^ I can’t believe anyone doesn’t know Amnesty International, but just in case: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/index.asp
^^ It’s amazing how difficult it is to get something signed and back into the post within a week.
§ Somehow I find Boris Karloff lurching into my mind’s eye here.
§§ One could say . . . butt
§§§ Yaaaaaay. I’ve been trying to find a good, reliable source of such for as long as I’ve had hellhounds in town. Among other things this eliminates at one swipe the question of whether a deposit is worth spending a plastic bag on: when you’re talking about landfill and the durability of plastic this is a serious question. No longer. Yaaaaaay! Forty days and they’re, uh, toast!^
^ So to speak.
¤ And I have hot water. Clean and worthy.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.