Yes. Must stay positive.

We had winter, 52 straight days no sun whatsoever. Now it’s June. Summer. By paper. Some week ago the weather forecast was: heatwave coming in few days. Oooh, I’m ready, took out my bikinis, tossed the winterboots. I’m proper ready. Yeah, you wanna know what today means heatwave? 16 degrees Celsius. It’s 60 F. 

It’s fucking freezing!!!! It’s excellent for night to sleep so it’s certainly not a fucking heatwave. But, as it is said to be heatwave I put on bikinis and set to garden to sunbathe. Shaking from cold I dragged out the bedding, only my nose was visible from under the covers. I quite enjoyed the day, fell asleep right there outside on my terrace too. I caught two flies with one stone or how the saying goes: nice sleep and a tan at the same time! For me it doesnt matter that only my nose is red :). In few weeks time I will be all tanned and perky, that’s how good genes I have. I looked briefly into my family history and found my ancestors came from todays Syria, Tunisia, through Morocco and Malta all the way up to godforsaken freezing North. Because they could. Because coming to live in freezing cold was a dream come true. My grandpa had full on afro actually. I remember being fascinated by his hair that was someting I had never seen before, a real afro. I was maybe 12 years old when he died and we as a family did not have much contact with him because we lived on island and that times we had many a reason not to visit him: we had full on farm with horses, cows, lambs, pigs, geese, turkeys, nutrias etc and even minks and ferrets, raven and fox! We actually could not leave the farm because all animals needed to be fed twice a day. And when mom, the real boss of the household, was at work in petrolstation, we had to do all the farmwork excluding feeding horses. That is because horses were the only ones that my dad agreed to feed. He seldomly did tho because he was always drunk. One year we marked down in oldfashioned paper wall calendar the days that he a was sober. Got whole two days!

No matter what kind of body you have got when you are young. Doesn’t matter really. Cos when you are old you look like melted candle. Heard this from some comedy show and must admit it’s totally correct. I do have a bit of a pickle now at work. I do some heavy physical stuff at port or warehouses every now and then. It’s as annoying as any work I suppose but it pays well so I have made myself love it. I love it because of the hard cash it brings in, and I sure love cash! So last week I was going to one location where one competitor showed up for his work. We are not quite 100% competitors but sort of because we have different clients. My clients are English speaking countries mainly, his are Russian speaking countries. Anyhow, we worked fine side by side, joking away as always, no hard feelings. I actually felt sorry for him because for whatever reason he thought he was to have 5, maybe 7 days full days work ahead and he quoted accordingly. However, third day it was obvious his understanding of the processes in this particular location were totally off. In reality he was facing 35 days of work. Not because he failed but could be he was not given full information on the capacity of the location. And for that he ran into minuses on about 4th day. He counted he would have 20 % of work done in one day, instead he had just 5 % work done. That literally means every next day he turns up for the work it’s not adding to income because he has costs now that were not counted for. I don’t know if he was fooled by the client. But I do know he now works 30 days for free if he can’t add the unexpected costs of labour he surely has to cover. So one day last week he turned up with a lady in her 50s or so. A bookkeeper from his company. They had figured they will train her to fulfill part of the tasks and this way she will have added interest to her daily life as a bookkeeper – one of the most boring jobs I know – and perhaps one day cover the locations when someone is on vacation. Basically, the aim is to train proper substitute for future. Good idea, benefictial for everyone involved. 

I kid you not, I was in shock in less than 30 minutes. I felt conflicted with myself, my thoughts, my horror, my gender, everything. Is it up to me to think anything, say anything, do anything? I doubt! It was unexpected, I did not know what to think or do, and I still don’t. And don’t get me wrong. I thought these times are over, when you are full grown woman you sure know stuff. And I am not sure now what to think. And perhaps I am not the one who has to do anything, most probably so, but I have weird thoughts on this and dread the tomorrow I have to work side by side with this woman.

The thing that I can’t wrap my mind around: she stinks severely of menstrual discharge. Grossly, extremely strong, almost rotting fish smell. And for two weeks. Which is confusing. First, age. Second, there are plenty of pink tax products to stick up there to not stink. Third, doesn’t she smell that gross stink and even more, if they work for years in OFFICE why nobody told her she stinks? Literally stinks! And I am really surprised I have such stupid problems and even more stupid thoughts. It’s gross. I know people who have diabetes have problems with stinky feet, sweating etc. and as they are constantly “in” the stink they end up not noticing their body odour. Is this the case? Not normal to have period longer than a week or so, also not much common to have period after 50+. I am not puritan but we are literally two metres apart for whole days and I get nauseous from this. Especially when it’s really 30C in the location. It’s like aroma sauna with terrible disgusting aroma. No therapy there, I say!

I’m going in tomorrow. Most probably she is there, right next to me. Stinking. Lord I hope she does not stink. Never in my life would I imagined to have this happening. I am grossed and embarassed, and I can’t change a thing. Counting by their progress I must just get my act together for another two weeks time and pray they will not get another deal at this location. 

So there it is. Judge me, my primitive thoughts on the unexpected disgust that occurred. Let me have it.

And, while we fight with the crisis…..

let us celebrate Birthday of the master, the captain of the seas, mr Jack Sparrow himself!

Hip Hip Hooray!

May there be lots of Rum!

Sun and Fun!

Love and all

XOXOX