Dulce et decorum pro fenestra mori

 This is the greatest day ever to be at work, although I might be saying that because I had 2 cups of coffee back to back.  I usually have a 1 cup maximum and a recovery day between, because I’m caffeine sensitive and I like to keep it that way.  But I’m going for gold now and it feels like amphetamines, only instead of sweating that weird smelling sweat I’m needing to duck outside to break wind without people hearing.  Although it doesn’t smell.  In fact, it’s a bit different to normal farts; I’m beginning to wonder if I’m queaffing. Oh yes, I know it’s highly inappropriate and disgusting to discuss such things but if I can’t talk about fanny farts on my own bloody diary then where can I?   

I sometimes wonder if the IT guy monitors my web activity.  Sure I use incognito mode on Chrome but that means nothing.  Although, I’m a bit unrealistic in how I imagine he monitors me specifically, constantly, while pretending to be busy with other work.  I imagine he catches all the packets of data and then has a program to reconstruct them together into a browser, exactly how it would look on mine with a 7 second delay. More likely he uses a screen capture software that even sees the things I don’t publish to the web, that I quickly erase thinking "Good god, woman, don’t discuss your gaseous bodily functions in that much detail!"  when I’ve had less coffee.  I can see his screen from here, so this is stupid, but it’s more interesting to imagine than watching him read an article about Windows 7 deployment in large enterprise environments.  

So I do roughly 20 minutes of work every day and spend the rest of the day pressing F7 on my browser waiting for facebook/forums/gmail/opendiary to present me some new distraction. It’s depressing. I have no one to talk to at the moment and as nice as the new guy is, even when he’s back from leave we’re not going to talk much.  I’m counting down the days until I know whether I get into uni or not.  If I can just make it to December, I’ll be okay.  I’ll be okay.  I’ll be okay.   More coffee please.  Oops, heart palpitations. 

When I realise how much time I’ve wasted and that I’ve done all the internet-based procrastination I can, I panic and go short-change the charity chocolate box.  I just constantly eat chocolate even when I feel nauseous from it.  1 kilo… 2 kilo… 5 kilos…. is it bad that I don’t care?  I did a 5am run and I’m buying boxing gear tonight, so maybe I do care.  Doesn’t really matter if I’m eating like a pig.  When I went on holidays I had days without chocolate,  I even refused more chocolate, but back at work I can’t decide which chocolate I want so I get them all. Like Pokemon. I wish they wouldn’t call them Share Packs – it makes me feel greedy.

I can never remember if I’ve already talked about something to someone.  My memory is still decaying.  I keep repeating myself.  My grandmother used to repeat the same things, the same questions and now she’s so far into Alzheimer’s I think of her as already dead.  I’m seeing her on Saturday.  Zombie grandma.  Oh wow, that’s even more inappropriate than queaffing.  I’m a terrible granddaughter.  In fact, I’m a bad relative and friend in general, because I won’t call or see anyone unless they call or ask to see me.  It’s just how things are now and if I make an effort to do differently it’ll just seem weird and creepy and like I want something.  You’re not allowed to change, people won’t stand for it.

Today at work they started putting up Halloween decorations.  It’s the 4th of November.  I don’t understand… what is this…  Doesn’t matter – I like Halloween.  It could be worse – they could be putting Christmas decorations up.  Maybe everyone is sick of my annual bitch about Christmas that they’ve decided to extend Halloween, a kind of "InB4 consumerist Christian misappropriations of winter pagan holidays" thing. 

Then they cleaned the windows.  The 10th storey windows.  With abseilers.  What a glorious job.  You get paid more because it’s dangerous.  What a glorious death.    

I like to stare out the windows a lot.  They keep making me move desks because we’re running out of room, and soon they’re going to ship me back to the home land, I can feel it, but the worst part of moving is that my view of the city has become obscured by the building next door.  But even so, I can still see the horizon above the rich Lower North Shore and Northern Beaches, and now the windows are clean it no longer looks like we’re covered in a blanket of smog.  I mean, the smog is probably still there but I can’t see it and that’s all that matters.

Cleaning windows makes a world of difference.  A clean window makes for a clean heart, I always say.