NO, BUT WHAT I’M SAYING IS

(This is how my new friend Iffy begins every sentence.) (She’s a mum too; it takes all kinds, right?)

People who don’t know how to be alone for even a little while are strange. I should know - I used to be one. No, but what I’m saying is…

Hahaha. I need a memory wipe.

My new friend Iffy came over for a few hours, which I allowed because B is out for the evening and I thought it would be nice, because sometimes changing your expression to indicate interest in what a person is saying to you when that person cannot be silent for a solitary moment or, conveniently, speak about anything other than themselves…sometimes that can be quite nice, right?

Well the old me would have thought so.

Right, so. She’s just left, and is doing what she always does, which is call me the second she realises she’s alone again. And if I’m so inclined to be somebody’s soundboard for an additional twenty minutes while they ride the city bus, well, then I will answer that call.

At the moment I am watching her calls come through again and again, and she must think that if she keeps dialling, one of these times at half past ten on a Fridayisaparentnow evening I am going to turn the ringer back on and answer it.

Also, the people upstairs seem to like listening to Vanilla Ice loudly and on repeat, especially on the weekends. Don't they know that it's 1999?

Sometimes I wish that it was all a conspiracy. It would give me a good reason to fly into a rage and run upstairs and tell them to shut it off before they wake my infant. But I'm too full of fear and apathy to do anything of the sort.

I don't know what I'm doing back here, exactly.