Damn Fire Inspector

I was having the loveliest dream this morning--something about a forest, and sunlight, and a carpet of flowers stretching towards a distant purple horizon. It was perfect. It was magic. It was beauty in a can. There were chirpy birds and stingy bees and silly squirrels--everything, in short, one might expect to find in such a paradise, and then there was a knock at the door. Still half-dreaming, I beamed muzzily discouraging thoughts at the knocker: go away.

A key turned in the lock. A bank of red and purple lupins exploded in a blast of shocked colour, dissipating in a shower of punctuation. Exclamation points spiked the air around my head.

"Get out! Get out," I screamed at the unknown intruder. "Get out this instant!" There was a scrape as the key withdrew, then another knock.

"Hold your horses. I'm coming, already." I put on my dressing-gown over my nightgown, and my coat over my dressing-gown, with the hood over my bedmuddled hair. I cracked open the door an inch, revealing the fire inspector, accompanied by a security guard.

"We have to replace the fire alarm," said the security guard.

"Now?"

"Yes. It'll only take two minutes."

"I'm not even dressed," I protested. "Come back in five minutes." I closed the door quickly, so they couldn't try to argue.

All my trousers were tangled up in a soggy swirl at the bottom of the washing machine, so I pulled on my grey skirt instead. I used to love that skirt--it's a nice, cozy wool one--but it stretched out in the wash, and now I don't even have to unzip it to get it on. It slides around my hips all day, and always ends up turning itself around. (Woo, look at that doofus with her skirt on backwards!) I put on my grey hoodie sweater as well, and, after a moment's debate, my coat. I shouldn't have put on the coat. It's a lovely coat, but it does have this way of pouching out and sweeping things up.

I didn't have any time to think, though. I'd no sooner thrust my feet into my sneakers when the knocking came back, and I had to let in the fire inspector. He put his ladder smack bang in the middle of the hallway, so I couldn't get past him into the living room. I waited patiently for a minute or two, but he was taking forever and a day with all the wee wires up there, and I was getting all woozy. I decided to go through the kitchen instead. As I went, I stuck out my hand to balance myself against the counter, and my coat sleeve swept an open can of pineapples onto the floor. I'd forgotten that was there. It had been sat sitting out all night, and, apparently, going bad. It splatted wetly onto the tiles, leaking rotten fruit juice everywhere. Horrible pong.

"Motherfucker," I snarled (except, since I was snarling, it was more "mzzzzrfckr!", sort of thing). I got out a cloth and cleaned up the mess, but it was too late. The kitchen smelled of overripe pineapples in overripe syrup all day. I'm still catching whiffs of it now, even with all the windows open wide.

Once the kitchen was scrubbed and the fire inspector was gone, I curled myself back into the corner of the couch and tried to recapture my dream, but it had gone. My dream-self wandered discontentedly in a dream-airport instead, waiting for someone who never came. Gradually, I came to the realization that I wasn't waiting at all: I was simply pretending to wait so I could live in the airport. I woke up in the real world as I stretched out to sleep on a row of terminal seats in the dream world. I wondered if I'd be a resourceful homeless person, if the day were to come when I could no longer pay the rent, or if I'd be a pathetic one who'd die of exposure the first night out. Would people give me leftover french fries and slices of pizza, or would I have to eat out of dustbins?

These things bear thinking about. I mean, you never know how things are going to turn out. Someone I used to date once promised to give me a diamond ring. He said I'd get it when I left my old life behind. He had the thing in a box in his desk all along, but although I did everything I was supposed to do, he never gave it to me. A lot of things in life are like that. Hard work's supposed to lead to financial success, for example, but it doesn't always. Sex is supposed to result in orgasms. (Not, of course, that I can complain of any recent disappointment in that area, since I haven't had sex in years.) Pepto-Bismol is supposed to relieve heartburn, and there you have it--the cause of my current discontent. I'd actually meant to be sleeping by this time, not sitting at the computer, but every time I curl up, the heartburn comes back.

Oh--oh! And one more example of everything going cockeyed, just to wrap things up for tonight: if you wash your trousers, they're supposed to get clean. Clean, of course, meaning not crusted over with laundry-soap deposits. Faugh.