I've just noticed that I have been starting my posts with "Well ..." or "So...", but, I'm not going to do that this time, tempting though it may be. So ... Gah! It's so tricky to just launch into a fresh narrative about the hours spent between sun-up and sun-down without employing these mundane little tin openers. Start again. Ahem.
Today I took my basket into my place of sometime employment. And it was not empty. It never is. This one's a pretty nifty little basket, sort of shaped like a squished oval magazine holder spanned by twisted wicker handle not unlike the lofty arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's always a bit of a jumble in there, and apart from the usual stuff like screwed up receipts from the fruit shop and the random bobby pins that seem to come from nowhere, most often it contains everything I need in order to make my day complete. Today it was mostly tip-top full of foody things, good foody things. I have been recently inspired to give The Good-Ship-Lollipop the old heave-ho, have walked the candy-coated plank, plunged over the sugar sprinkled side, and am now madly paddling away on a dark-chocolate raft toward some distant island where there is nothing to eat but sheep, cows, abundant varieties of roots, shoots and vegetables, and of course, Haloumi cheese. And I am feeling so much better for it. But this all means that I really have to pack lots of stuff [read "food stuff"] into my basket in order to get through the day without wanting to lick the purple suede upholstery off the meeting room chairs, or worse still, scrounge enough five cent pieces out of the manifold crevices of my purse in order to extricate a peppermint Aero bar out of the junk food dispenser in the communal staff room. I like to eat my breakfast at work. "Tut Tut" some might say, but I figure that it is far more time consuming to masticate my way through a bowl of chopped up apple and banana with Greek yoghurt, soy, linseed and almond meal with cinnamon topping before I hurtle out the door at 8am, than it is to leisurely and discreetly imbibe this wholesome delicacy whilst waiting for my computer to go through it's morning ablutions, to continue nibbling at the nuts whilst downloading and checking through my accumulatied email, whilst testing out the swivel of my ergonomic swivel chair, and to enquire as to the health and wellbeing of my fellow officonians. Besides, it's just another example of how proficient women are are multitasking. Why do just one thing well, when you can do six things reasonably well. But this morning was a little different. I was alone, entirely alone. My esteemed colleagues, having embarked on a field trip to the Big-End-Of-Town to acquire some obligitory statutory up-skilling, I decided that it would be right and proper that I yield to the call of duty and remain on deck in case I needed to answer a phone or something. But it was not the deck of The-Good-Ship-Lollipop, no sir, it was in fact the deck, the fore-deck, the aft-deck, the poop, the prow, the bow and the rigging of the troup-sloop, a vessel affectionately known to only a select few, but that to you may be deemed to be my place of employment. But back to my basket, the contents of which sustained me without stint or deprivation for the entire 7.5 hours of my day spent as Captain-at-the-helm. So, after the apple and yoghurt thing, which has been fully described aforesaid, there was a ripe golden pear, a nectarine, plump and juicy-sweet, three little plums, a banana, and a lovely passionfruity passionfruit to drizzle over the top of it. There was a big round of cold roasted vegetables, sweet potatoes and beetroots and pumpkin and garlic and slices of cold tender lamb, all salty and infused with rosemary and oils. And an orange. But I saved the orange until last, juicy and fleshy and sweet as the last days of summer ... I get the feeling that you might think that with all this foody stuff going on at work that I wouldn't have had time for anything else, but that is not the case. I did in fact used many of my pounds of flesh today wrangling stickers onto files, and figuring out how to fold up archive boxes so that they actually make boxes instead of misshapen origami-like thingies, and how to sort all those files that are ready for the twilight zone into alphabetical order so that they can go into all the boxes that I figured out how to fold up, and how to get the data out of the records management system so that it can go into a spreadsheet so that you can send it to the archives people without them sending it back because it's not quite right, and how to unjam the paper jams in the photocopier that jam in the really tricky spot that no-one can find, and answering the phone and telling the people that the people they want to talk to today aren't available today, but they can ring back tomorrow and talk to them tomorrow, and figuring out that I know frigg-all about the bloody content management system, but that there are people out there who do know all about the content management system, and they are after all, willing to help. And after all that, after all that ... I dipped back into my basket, and found the Panadeine for my aching back, and the vanilla green tea tea-bags to soothe my soul, and the little bottle of eu de parfum to freshen my senses, and finally, finally, my trusty old trashy red lipstick, the one that lets me know that I am alive. Alive! Alive! I did survive! Viva la basket!
