That's Annoying

I'm vanquished! Defeated! Squashed like fifty-six individual hazelnuts in a single jar of Nutella! Ah, North Wind, you horrid old man, can't you spare but a zephyr for this miserable rat?

That is to say, I can't remember the last time I felt this 'orrible this long. My whole body's gone that creaky, decrepit way you get. You can see me in the morning, hobbling about like I'm ninety years old, and Stella running figure eights between my feet. Half an hour later, she's eating my breakfast, which I'm too exhausted to chew. (Me, I'm eating ice cream, melted down and mixed with frozen raspberries. Hey, I'm entitled to a bit of a silver lining, here, wouldn't you say?)

And then Clint Eastwood comes on the telly, and suddenly I can't get That's Amore out of my head.

When a song's in your head
And you wish you was dead,
That's annoying.

Then, I can't find my left sock. He is hiding with malicious intent. He is glad I can't find him:

Me, I'm a sock. I'm lying on the gosh-durn floor. What'd you expect? Before long, someone'll have their great stenchy foot shoved up me--unph!--and they'll be hoicking me up to my limit. Yank, yank, and the ripping of stitches; such is the life of a sock. Then, one day your toe comes through my toe, and such is the death of a sock. Tragic, isn't it? Fair brings a tear to the eye, what? Can you blame me for hiding, given said circumstantials? Yeah, I'm under the sofa. What of it? Can you blame a sock for--

--those socks sure are tiresome. All they ever think about is their own personal comfort. I hate garments like that. Because of that good-for-nothing-sock, I was crawling round the living room on my knees. And because I wasn't fully dressed yet, I hadn't tucked my shirt into my trousers, and that opened the way for Stella to barrel in there and scratch up my right tit something awful. I don't blame Stella, though. It was the sock. It was all on that goddamn sock. I still haven't found it. It wasn't under the sofa, the devious wee cunt. Thanks to that sock, I look like I've either fallen through a barbed-wire fence or indulged in a night of the naughtiest sex imaginable, possibly with the guy from Nightmare on Elm Street.

"Oh, give it to me, Clint!"

"I'm not Clint...I'm Freddy! Take this!"

"Yikes!"

"And this!"

"Ouch! Hey!"

"You know you want it!"

"Gerroff...."

"That's the general idea. Unf. Unf. Slice."

(Groan.)

I had a dream, too, where I was under the biggest maple tree in the world. It was autumn, and so quiet I could hear the snap and whisper of dead leaves breaking off and gliding to the ground. I liked it there, but then the TV butted in:

"Mmmm. These Kix are good."

I launched myself from the couch with a veritable roar of fury, designed to overpower the snappy open-mouth eating noises that would inevitably follow, but it was all for naught. By the time I'd rooted out the remote and found the channel-flip button, I was out of breath and the brats were waxing eloquent round mouthfuls of half-chewed corn cereal. Disgusting.

I went back to sleep afterwards, but I dreamed of water torture. It's the toilet, see. It's still broken, and that constant drip-drip-drip into the bucket is doing my head in. If I could have just one wish--well, it'd be for a lifetime of good health--but if I could have another wish after that, it would be for the toilet to stop dripping. I can hear it now. I can hear it all the time. Turn up the radio and the television though I may, it's still there underneath. I was drawing in time with the drips the other day: drip-drip-drip; stroke-stroke-stroke; drip-drip-drip; erase-erase-erase--ah, make it stop!

I stuck my hand in the tank yesterday, as per instructions received via the Internet, and tried to tighten the seal, but it wouldn't budge an inch. I think I might have a new-fangled toilet that hasn't got a seal. Either that, or I wasn't tightening the right thing.

...and after all that, I got on the computer and wrote a journal entry that didn't make a terrible amount of sense. It had Clint Eastwood and ice-cream and scratchfooted rats. It read a bit on the bitter side, but I could still hear the toilet, see, even off at the other end of the apartment, and it had me in an abominable mood. Later that evening, I...

(Well, we'll see, won't we?)