Fingers crossed

Up slightly earlier than usual because any minute now the delivery guy from the home and garden shop is coming here to take some measurements to establish whether or not the fridge I crave can actually be made to fit through my fairly narrow door frame. (The only other time it struck me that my door wasn’t very wide was when the existing fridge was delivered and they had to take the door out of the frame.) Fingers crossed.

After he’s been and gone, it’ll be time to haul the ladder up to the back of the house and get up on the roof to give it its annual clean. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you might want to call an ambulance.

While I’m waiting for the delivery guy, perhaps it’s time for a bit of a confession. (Not sure “confession” is the right word.) For most of the summer (if you can call what we’ve had a summer) I’ve been pretty zoned out. It’s not full on black dog, but a kind of mental paralysis. The sort of thing I was talking about earlier in the year, summed up, I suppose, as a case of far-from-great expectations. In other words, I’m having trouble getting anything done.

Usually when I go through a spell like this, it’s just some sort of miasma that seems to descend for no reason. This time there was a reason. And no, not the frigging pandemic. Well, not directly anyway.

This descended when I discovered that every other bugger I know (well, three buggers I know) had taken a leaf out of Shakespeare’s book and decided to use their lockdown time to write plays. Two of said buggers had never written any form of fiction before. When one of them (a painter who’d found himself unable to paint during the pandemic) told me he’d been sitting down every day for ten weeks to write for three or four hours a day, I thought my head was going to explode. Why him?!? I screamed mentally to the writing gods. Why him and not me? Why can’t I sit down and create something wonderful, plucked from my imagination for three or four hours a day?

That’s when the summer (which was already pretty shit) went completely to shit. All those outdoor jobs that remain half finished – or were never even started. All those brain dead hours spent playing spider solitaire. (Yes, the stupid fucking spider has been back on the scene for a while.) I honestly don’t know how to climb out of this whole. I’m hoping the process might begin with having a day when I actually manage to get something done. Ergo, time to get up on the roof.

Brief pause while Mike, the delivery guy turns up. Yes! He says he’s pretty sure the fridge will fit through the door frame. Once he’s confirmed this, he can deliver it next Tuesday. Oh, my god! Fridge of my dreams!  (And that gives me something to get done tomorrow – clearing the existing fridge out.)

I feel better already.