work – Page 2 – Louisa Parry

3BT – wide awake, sleepy, somewhere else for a moment

1. Despite promises that he’d go to sleep if I walked around the block, Joe wide-eyed stares with a concerned look on his face, wondering why he’s being pushed around by a strange fuzzy lady. Then, about ten minutes in, he realises I’m cool and is all smiles for the rest of the walk. When we return to our starting point to wait for the end of his mum’s appointment, I throw milk over the both of us. I think he’s rather glad when his mum reappears to wipe us off.

2. Heads nod rhythmically by the time we hit Rodley. The air on the bus is stifling, coma-inducing but the traffic is on our side and we sail through Calverley with barely a pause. Stepping out onto the pavement reminds me of the plunge pool at the Turkish baths.

3. Caius accidentally knocks over the heater in the office. The bang jolts us all for a few seconds. Later, at home, the tongs snap apart as I’m loading the stove and I’m jolted again. Our brains are frighteningly unaccustomed to the out of the ordinary.

3BT – racing, productive, post office, cheese, wowed by WoW

15/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. A few people have suggested we have a second bathroom installed on our lower ground floor – near the area which will be our office – but if we did, we’d have no reason to race up the stairs, pushing past each other, pulling back on jeans’ waistbands, when we both realise we need to wee at the same time.

2. I work hard all day – nothing from my to-do list and hardly any billable hours – but I tick off a range of things that have been nagging at me for weeks, perhaps months. For the first time in a while, I feel like I’m making progress on my life rather than just treading water.

3. The walk to the post office is delightful – until the very end, it feels like a walk through a country village and it’s just far enough to warm me up without being an over-exertion or taking all day.

4. We eat enchiladas for dinner, the second helping of a batch from earlier in the week. “Is there anything better than baked cheese?” I ask John as I chew on a perfectly browned piece. He replies: “Twice as much baked cheese.”

5. I have a fantastic evening’s play on World of Warcraft – I complete some quests that had been bugging me (because they’d been too hard before) and successfully sell some items at auction so I won’t have to worry about game-money for a while. The interface overlays my dreams though, so possibly played it a little too much…

3BT – waking, bacon, quality

9/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. Even though we don’t have to get up particularly early for work – and work from home, it’s still a pleasure to have an alarm-less morning at the weekend.

2. I nibble off the piece of bacon extruding from the bread and it’s delicious – perfectly salty, perfectly crisp, bacon at its best.

3. Despite being together nearly all day every day, sometimes we don’t actually see each other that much – working together or working in the same room but not together, or as has been the case recently, being in the same but being ill aren’t in any way “quality time”. Today – a day off work and the first day neither of us has felt particularly ill – is a “quality day”, even though we don’t do much. We sing silly songs with each other, we make dumb jokes, we provide sarcastic commentary to the media we’re watching, we awww at cats, we tell stories and we kick ideas around. Even now, when I’m in bed hurriedly writing this, John interrupts to ask about the use of “had had” in the book he’s reading and we have a discussion about that, “it it”, “in in” “that that” and my favourite, “not not”.

3BT – phezoo, gummy wisdom, it is quite social you know

7/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. We have a phone conference instead of our weekly in-person meeting. Restricted to just our voices, we’re more stilted and business like than usual but the phone service makes us smile with a comedy “phezoo” noise whenever anyone leaves. In our text-based chat later, Caius announces a sub-set meeting is over, saying “Participants dispersed in a hail of alien gunfire”.

2. My first wisdom tooth has finally made it into the open. The gum around it feels spongy and soft. I can’t resist tonguing it because it reminds me of losing teeth when I was a child.

3. I talk to a Romanian guy living in Sweden about life in the UK (and how it’s a balmy -6°C compared to his -25°C) while killing mutated turtles in a mythical land.

3BT – sugar, snow, dinner, snow #2

17/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

1) Jeremy returns from the shop with an armful of mini cakes. The sugar high silliness starts before we’d even open the packets.

2) Eyes light up, fingers point, the woman at the fish and chip shop will be delighted – it’s snowing outside. Soon we’ll start talking about the inevitable, unnecessary traffic chaos that will ensue but for the moment, we enjoy the novelty of the sky falling down.

3) We exchange anecdotes and in-jokes over our Christmas meal. The food and the company are both excellent. The whole team together for the first time.

4) When we get home, we peek out onto the world transformed – the first time we’ve seen our garden and the woods filled with snow. The stray light from around and about is reflected back to us, letting us see further in the dark woods than normal. The snow on the balcony – around the cat flap – is undisturbed but with a bit of encouragement, Carbon steps out. He makes it a few steps before turning around and running back inside.

(Oops, forgot this one. It should be 3.5: I discover celery and honey go strangely well together, the second unexpectedly nice combination of the week. The first was strawberry flavoured sugar-free Calpol and toothpaste.)

3BT – yellow, Leeds, ill

10/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The vivid turmeric in the curry turns their lips yellow and we laugh.

2. A combination of a large lunch and a warm office make me feel incredibly sleepy by mid-afternoon so I decide to go for a walk around the playing field at the front of the office to wake myself up. After I complete the first side of the rectangle, I turn to find a view of Leeds I’ve never seen before, glorious in the dying light. The buildings on the hill to the north of the city centre – the university’s Parkinson building, the churches and the rust tower – are most prominent but the sea of new tower blocks to the east are visible too. As I become more distanced from Leeds, I can see how much it’s grown and transformed during my time there.

3. It turns out my mid-afternoon sleepiness is also because I’m getting ill – I started to feel rough in the office but during the journey home, it fully blooms. It’s John’s cold from last weekend so now it’s his turn to look after me. In the evening, we eat soup and watch cartoons. The momentary relief after a sneeze or sinus shift is heavenly.

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