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Luck

Hello.

I have decided to start catalogueing my luck. Or, rather, lack of it.

I’m not saying good things don’t happen to me, I guess they do in small doses, but they sure do not appear half as much as the bad luck.

Yeah, so I’m not a starving child with AIDS in Africa. And I haven’t been kept in a cellar for 24 years either.  But for a person growing up in London, in my circumstances, I would say I have shit luck.

I’m going to start with today, and as and when I will update with new stories of bad luck happening to me. To make it not look like I’m whinging I’ll mention when good things happen, too.

So… today. I had to leave work early for a doctor’s appointment. Let’s backtrack a bit first… I wrote a post up on this here site when I couldn’t sleep just over a week ago.  I had something wrong with my ears.  Well, the ear problem has continued to exist, sporadically and at different degrees of pain/annoyance.  However, I thought it best I go get it checked out at the doctor’s. That was last friday (a week ago today).

The doctor was a woman I hadn’t met before. She kind of made me feel bad about coming to her with my complaints and then ridiculed me when she took a look inside my ears because there’s wax in them. Well excuse me!!  She said I should make an appointment with the nurse for a week’s time to get my ears syringed, and in the mean time put olive oil drops in to soften the wax. Tasty.

After the appointment I went straight to the receptionist and asked for an appointment with the nurse in a week’s time to have my ears syringed.  She said the only time they had was 3:50pm. I said that’s great, thanks and I was on my way.

I haven’t bothered changing my surgery yet to a local one, because there was a couple of ongoing things I needed to sort out at this one first.  So this doctor’s surgery is all the way in Mitcham.  It takes me 30 minutes at most to get home in Surbiton from work. To get to the doctors from work, it takes about 45 minutes… maybe 50 minutes.

Sooo I left work early today to get to my appointment.  I managed to catch the weather just after it had stopped raining (which was good, because I didn’t have my waterproofs with me).  I rode through the traffic in Putney, I rode all the way through Wimbledon during tennis season (agh!), stopped for petrol just in case, and squeezed through more traffic to get to my doctor’s surgery.  I parked up my bike, put the disc lock on the front wheel, put the chain on my back wheel that I specifically had brought with me for this visit.

I went inside the surgery and the lady I booked the appointment with was there along with this rude receptionist that I have never liked much. On account that she is often rude.

I said I had an appointment with a nurse at 3:50. After some typing on the computer and looking confused she told me that there isnt an appointment for me. I said I booked it a week ago with ‘this lady’ (who promptly decided not to get involved and help me out - yeah thanks lady).  The rude one said that she wouldn’t know it why would have been booked for today because the nurse doesn’t work on fridays. So I asked when the appointment was booked for then. She looked it up and told me it was the Monday just gone.

I was confused and asked why it was booked for the monday when I had asked for it to be for a week’s time. She shrugged and was clearly under the impression that I had gotten my dates mixed up and it was somehow my fault. All the while, the other lady didn’t say a bloody thing.  I didn’t get an apology for the mix up, either.

So I had to book another appointment for this monday instead. And she wrote it on a card for me to remember - hinting I had forgotten the last appointment because it wasn’t written down.

Pleh.

I had to give a letter to her too to pass on to one of the doctors.  The last time I handed the receptionist something to pass on to the doctor (test results), when I had my appointment with him a few days later to discuss the results, they still hadn’t given it to him. It was still down on the reception desk. He had to phone them from his office and tell them off. So God knows when the doctor is going to get this letter.

Anyway, there’s my typical Sod’s Law bad luck for today.

Next week I am going to apply for a loan from my bank, after waiting two months for my credit report to update and show I had no debt.

I’m not holdng my breath that it’ll go the way I want.

Who Needs Sleep?

I am an incredibly light sleeper.  I’m usually a silent sleeper too. On the rare occasion that I make a noise, I always wake myself up with the first snore. I think it comes from when I was a child. My neighbours were loud, pretty much 24 hours a day. When one neighbour was quiet and decidede to turn their music off, anotherwould start until 4am.  It was hell.  So I used to struggle to sleep every single night.  Also I have that lucid dreaming thing, so that means I don’t get enough of the proper sleep, too. 

So I took to wearing ear plugs to bed.  I pretty much can’t sleep without them unless it’s well and truly dead quiet.  Where I live now, I can hear all the pipes chugging away when the neighbours run their water. And I can hear every single footstep they take in their house (and they have the auducity to bang on the floor to get us to turn out tv down at 10 at night - sometimes when the tv is in fact not making ANY noise. I think their frustration is misdirected at times). 

However, I think the years of ear plug use is finally taking it’s toll on my ears. For the last few nights, when I’v woken up for one of my many trips to the loo, I’ve been ‘hearing’ a throbbing in my left ear. It seems to be in time with my pulse. It’s loud and it affects my whole head. After a while it’ll go and I could go back to sleep.

Now tonight I’ve actually been weoken up by a repetitive ringing almost like a bell you get to get a concierge’s attention at a hotel. As well as the throbbing. It wouldn’t go away. AndI simply coudln’t sleep. So I’ve had to get up and stay awake long enough for it to go away. It has just gone now, after being awake for about 30 minutes.  However I’m cautious that when I go back to bed, it will start up again… I really hope not. I like my sleep. Not in a lazy kind of way, but because I have crazy interesting dreams. I had some kinf os flying car in the dream I was having before the ringing woke me up.

Shit… the thobbing is back before I even finished writing this. This sucks.  I really hope it’s not a permanent problem I’m going to have. While it’s throbbing, for a second I can’t hear anything else. This will be bad if it’s permanent.  My dad has tinnitus and it’s not fun. It keeps him awake. 

I might go kill some time watching those baby lions.

Soundtrack to my Life

I don’t usually do these kinds of things. But today I did…

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend your cool

Opening credits: Place Your Hands - Reef

Waking up: Skid Row (Downtown) - Little Shop of Horrors Soundtrack

First day of school: Rebel Rebel - David Bowie

Falling in love: Sing Along - Blue Man Group & Dave Matthews

Fight song: Dinner at Eight - Rufus Wainwright

Breaking up: Maggie May - Rod Stewart

Prom Night: Call Me Calmly - Barenaked Ladies

Life: Achilles Last Stand - Led Zeppelin

Mental breakdown: Underground - Ben Folds Five

Driving: Knights of the Round Table (Camelot Song) - Monty Python

Flashback: Feel - Matchbox Twenty

Getting back together: III Wishes - Terrorvision

Wedding: The Consequences of Living in a Container - Boothby Graffoe

Birth of a child: Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank - Barenaked Ladies

Final Battle: Wot Italian? - Boothby Graffoe

Funeral Song: Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to be a Long Long Time) - Elton John

Final Credits: She’s Pulling Out the Pin - Elvis Costello

Well… most of those songs seem appropriate… I love the first day of school one though, that’s awesome.

Crocodile Shoes

As I won’t be having kids (and I’m happy with this decision… don’t get me into a rant), I find stories about my workmate’s young children interesting. There are things I won’t have to go through like spending loads of money on nappies and baby food and annoying things like that. But there’s some fun stuff I’ll miss out on, too.

Today Bill (my workmate) had a call from his wife. She’d taken their 2 1/2 year old son out to buy him some proper trainers. He had Clarks kind of trainers that Bill thought were kind of like shoes disabled kids wear.  I don’t know what shoes disabled kids wear.  But apparantly it’s not ‘proper’ trainers.

Anyway the choice had come down to a pair of Nike trainers and some LaCoste trainers. It turns out Liam (Bill’s son) wanted the trainers with the crocodiles on.  Now any older fashion-conscious kid would have chosen the Nikes, because of what surrounds the brand name. But to a two year old, it comes down to the simple fact that these trainers had crocodiles on them.

I hope he doesn’t grow out of that.

Maybe I won’t miss out on the fun stuff… I’ll be a great aunty. And it means I don’t have to deal with the waking up at odd hours. I’ll just do the fun stuff like taking them to the park or zoo. Awesome.

Sunday

I’m not sure how it’s possible to get a sunburn without any sun. I did the Walk for Life today. A 10km trek through London. The weather was ok but not exactly hot. And I got sunburnt. How?!

Anyway, I did it and my legs ache and I’m tired. Now I just need to collect the money from my sponsors.

I’ve also come up with an idea for a script or story. It still needs some padding out and changes and developing, but the bare bones are there.  However I’m not sure if it’ll be any good because it involves a coma. And That’s annoying. However, Kill Bill and Life on Mars involve comas and they’re good. 

I’ve been watching too much Life on Mars, incidentally. Today I’m going through the second series. I never watched it, but I should have because it’s good.