Albatross

You know what I hate? When everything’s fine and every day’s lovely, but for one festering albatross round my neck. A nasty old deadbatross, dropping deadbatross fleas down my collar. (Do birds have fleas? Do albatrosses? Maybe they have mites. Those little…those, when you pick up a sick bird and those grey things swarm your hands. The things they’d normally peck out, but they can’t any more. Those things. I’ve got those down my back. Not literally, because who’d wear a dead albatross, but in my brain, when I let my mind wander….)

I won’t be all cryptic, because that’s annoying. I’m just in a snit ’cause I’ve loads of work to do, and a whole heap of wash waiting to be ironed. It’s been piling up a while. My housekeeper offered to do it, but that’s not her job. She shouldn’t have to touch my knickers.

I don’t want to do it. It’s all messy and wrinkled.

(Maybe it’s not laundry. Maybe it’s more of a work thing, but I’d rather sound petty than unprofessional. Not that I…I mean, if it were a work thing, I wouldn’t be badmouthing anyone. I’d just be putting off one of those things, ah…every job has its dull bits. Bits you put off, like figuring out why your fucking scanner won’t connect to your fucking wifi, and your latest assignment’s just sitting there, and you can’t get paid till you scan it, and why won’t you fucking connect?)

All right. Yes. I’m definitely talking about work. My scanner’s proper borked. I rang tech support, and that was useless. I kicked it, too, and now my toe hurts. I tried all the usual things, swearing, screaming, unplugging and plugging back in. I’d just use a wired connection, but I can’t lift the bally thing. I can’t get it close enough to my computer. Why is technology…just why?

As albatrosses go, it’s not the worst one. More of a sparrow, really. A smelly dead sparrow on a chain.

The laundry thing’s true, too, by the way. I really haven’t done my ironing. It’s just, I don’t care about that. I’ll probably end up wearing my clothes wrinkly. I usually do.

It took me nine hours to write 2,500 words today, mostly because I was angry about my scanner. There’s probably a load of typos in there, and I’m so tired I just wrote “skanner.”

F. this day. F. it up the G. A..