Juggling eggs and feeling scrambled

Yesterday was an up-and-down sort of day. On a “mood scale” from 0 to 10, I swung back and forth from a hopeless 1½ to a just-about-manageable 4. I entered a couple of inner-city lifts that normally stopped at real estate agents’ offices but yesterday weren’t going anywhere. I didn’t care. It was quite nice being in a lift. In Dick Smiths I was overwhelmed by all the lights and noise but sensibly got out before I did thousands of dollars worth of damage. I also chatted briefly with the busker I met last weekend. He juggles with up to four Head tennis balls, often dropping them. I can manage three and had a go myself. I asked him what the trick was for doing four; it looked to me like an optical illusion where you do two in each hand simultaneously. He only had 70 cents sitting on his rug; I threw him another 70. I suggested he might get more money if he diversified a bit – different coloured balls, tennis rackets, clubs, I even mentioned eggs. He just nodded and chuckled. I could do his job, if only I had the balls, so to speak.

Yesterday I was losing it, swearing and punching pedestrian crossing buttons, but when my mood scale was at four I steeled myself to view two flats. The first was in Brooklyn, right next to the cinema. I mean right next to the cinema. It had a spacious deck, but all you could see from it was the cinema wall. I couldn’t have fitted my bed in either of its two bedrooms. The 77-year-old landlord was charming and it’s a shame I’ll almost certainly never see him again, but I still couldn’t take the place. The other was in Te Aro – I walked to it from my apartment – and was potentially great but a bit pricey. If I was moving in with a flatmate it could have been a goer.

I got home and writhed around on my bed. Oh shit. I’ve got all this stuff to do with no hope of ever doing it. I rang Brendan in Auckland and we spoke for 2½ hours. I don’t think I’ve ever talked on the phone for that long before. He was very helpful; I’m lucky to have him as a friend. We clarified what I already knew, that applying for the job in the first place wasn’t particularly clever. Brendan was going through a bad patch himself a few months ago and he seems a lot better now.

It’s really hard to care about flats, my job or a lot else at the moment. Nothing excites me any more. My get-up-and-go has got up and gone. I really wish I could get it back.
In that earthquake claims job, for a minute there I actually cared what I looked like when I walked out the door in the morning.

Two things to say about Wellingtonians:
1. You lot who keep complaining about the weather obviously haven’t got very big problems.
2. “It’s too far away.” Bollocks! You have no idea what “far” is.

I’m struggling a bit with the complexities of living is 2011. What the f*** is Blu-Ray? Bluetooth? How does a T-stick work and why should I care? So for me, Good Friday’s supermarket sweep at Hamilton’s Pak ‘n’ Save was a good news story. The store automatically opened as usual, even though it was a public holiday, due to a computer glitch. No staff were present so people just filled their trolleys to the brim and left without paying. What was wrong with a man or woman with a key?

I might pop to the cinema (if I can face it) to see Paul. The film I mean.