Naive Psychologist – Page 71 – we're all making our own sense of things

I’m going to clean the house

Whenever someone says ‘Therese Rein’ I can’t help thinking of this verse:

Claude Rains gave the order,
To collect the usual suspects,
And the camera came in close up on his face,
He watched as the plane left the airstrip,
Like hope leaves a dying man,
But he hung onto the choice he'd made.

which comes from a song, Claude Rains, by The Front Lawn, a group I very much enjoyed discovering when I lived in New Zealand and a song I very much enjoyed singing at the top of my voice.

It comes with a complex story, the gift of that CD. It’s around that time that my life became less simple than it had previously been. Today, I shall be listening to Classic FM and hoping that they play music which has, for me, no particular significance. It’s one of those days.

A bit more work then

‘So does that work?’ I ask.

‘Well that depends,’ he says. ‘Are you writing a campaign speech or a joke?’

Friday night and it’s getting chilly now

‘You’d be amazed at how just twenty minutes housework would get you warm,’ Adelaide said.

‘Did you read that somewhere?’ the mister asked.

He was not, Adelaide thought for not the first time, the polite man she had married.

‘It’s also a good way to get the incidental exercise you need if you truly are going to stop yourself pudding on the pounds,’ she said scratching at eyebrows which had never, not once, ever been plucked.

‘I think I’ll put the heater on,’ he said.

‘Good idea,’ she said and reached for the cross-stich at which she was proving to be not very good.

And they sat in what was, for now, a messy, but warm, room and lamented the fact that Spooks had finished last week.

Goodness me, is that the time?

At each of our six meetings, she has said I married him for better or for worse but not for lunch and while her laugh is never quite the same, my mmmm has never changed.

Is it only ten o’clock?

Having been ‘at home during the day’ for many years now, I have a pretty high tolerance for rubbish radio. It can’t be easy filling all that silence. But this thing they’ve got on ABC 891 right now – hey folks, men and women approach the shopping differently, ring in now with your funny tales, listen to this, I always buy an extra scourer, scourers don’t go off boom-boom – is giving me the shits so badly that I am off to sort the washing more carefully.

Is it only nine o’clock?

‘You’re a very contrary boy, aren’t you?’

‘NO I’M NOT.’ Said with two fingers shaped as guns and aimed at me.

It was an easy laugh, but a hearty one.

You have to take your victories when you can.

Thursday

While he and I generally enjoy the simple banter of two people who see each other every week but don’t know each others’ names, today he makes lame retailers’ excuses to the point that I want to say – in a snippy way – you know, I really doubt that it has been delayed by customs…oh, look at the stall just down there I see* they have a great carton of jars of which they are willing to hand me one in exchange for a small gold coin;** and while it is true that the jars are small and not the brand I would usually choose, nonetheless they are available now and the person selling them will not make me endure this endless litany of excuses for the space on your shelf where your dijon mustard should be.

*no, technically, you wouldn’t be able to see it from here unless you had x-ray vision or eyes which could travel around corners on something resembling elastic, but this here is dramatic licence, and I knew they would be there, because they always are

**I’m not entirely sure that this is a good use of the semi-colon, it being a mark I rarely use. But given certain recent advices, I thought I’d give it a go.

Just to keep you up to date with all the important comings and goings in my life

I have written to the ABC asking them to confirm or deny Andrew’s comment (see Friday’s post below if you don’t know what I’m talking about). I did it via their online feedback sheet and it may take up to four weeks for a response.

Sleep well.

Cloudy but fine

My acupuncturist – I make regular visits now, and so I feel that I can call her my – says that today my pulses are slippery and therefore promising. Unlike last week, when my pulses were bright and she had to wipe my eyes with the towel which, because it was warm, made me cry a little more.

Words

There’s been a bit of talk about ‘s*x’ in this house lately. Not the act, but the actual word. ‘You’re a s*x* lady’, for example, has become something of a refrain bandied about in that way children do when they know that they don’t know what it means, but are seduced by the knowledge of potential subserviseness. You know what I mean. You’ve all been children.

When I hear them messing around with words with each other in the back yard, I do let it go a bit. I think it’s important that they have a chance to experiment with the words and so on. Plus, like, I do swear a bit, so, you know, I have to wear it a bit if they embarrass me when they’re out. But I also make quite an effort to point out that words have meanings, can hurt people, will offend people and so on. I find ‘well, would you say it at nana’s’ to be the best way of making my meaning felt. They seem to know instinctively, and I just love the looks on their faces when they say ‘well, of course not’. Like, how dumb do you think we are?

But apparently, while I have been in here tapping away at something I feel should not be taking quite so long to write, Andrew on PlaySchool said as he pointed to the sponge cakes he was about to transform into lamingtons ‘we’re going to s*x it up’. Both of my children reckon that’s what he said, and they’ve got those smiles as they tell me that’s what he said. The ones they have when they get to say something they’re not really supposed to be saying.

Really? Did Andrew really say that? Not that I’m going to write letters to the editor about it or start voting for John Howard in protest at left-wing bias on the ABC if he did. It’s not a moral outrage or anything, and it’s a pretty good description of what happens to sponge as it becomes lamington. But I’d kind of like to know. Just because…I dunno, just because it’s interesting if that is what he said. So if you were supervising your children’s viewing this afternoon, could you let me know? Thanks.