The Big Life in a Small Town

This week started out poorly. I decided to floss my teeth and this resulted in a big chip coming off one tooth and another getting lodged in a crevasse. After the initial shock, I was pretty annoyed that my attempt at dental hygiene had been rebuked by my body in such a forceful way. I am learning to live with the strangely lodged chunk of tooth as I am irrationally terrified of dentists ever since one told me that it was inevitable that I would lose all feeling in my lips and possibly most of my jaw if I was to have the operation to "correct" my wisdom teeth. I decided at that point to grow tusks instead and here we have the ongoing consequences of that act of cowardice.

I don't really remember a lot of the rest of the week. I'd like to be able to put this down to outrageous drinking and wild living, but actually it is because it was so mind-numbingly dull and predictable that the highlight was baby-sitting my nieces for a few hours while sister went to class about how to sell beauty products. We watched Kung Fu Panda (again) and I struggled with a crossword. The week ended with two people leaving work who have each (in their very different ways) had a big impact on my working life here. The first is Gill. She is a veteran of the Sheltered Workshop and was the person who hired me into the organisation as a temp and tried to teach me the ways of survival ("Always cover your arse with a paper trail") and the codes of the chronic martyr. Shocked though I am at her resignation, my hope in the resilience of human spirit is renewed. Perhaps she will find her smile again in the near future. Inshalla.

The second is Strelan, the person who first showed me some friendship (or at least companionable emailing from our respective far-flung fortresses of solitude) and has been a reliable source since then of off-hand humour, new musical influences, occasional insight into the worldview and values of Gen Y, and frankly an ambitious but ultimately non-winning poker strategy. I am delighted at the fact that he has gained escape velocity from the draining gravity well of the Sheltered Workshop's weekly pay cheque, and is smiling and bouncing at the idea of working somewhere that he can do stuff. Happy hunting Strelan.

Today was so perfect that I had to dust down the banana lounge and find a pillow and a paper to read then I had all the props in place to do nothing at all. The paper was a week or two old (and was just the News Review and Business sections), but I read it on and off and the birds sang and the sky was blue and the dog snored softly in the grass by my side. A gorgeous way to wrap up the week and I'm so relaxed that I think I'll just hum a little to myself and maybe snooze a little more.