Do you see what I see?

We've joined the throng of rental seekers. On Saturday mornings we go forth, bathed (yes even), provisioned with victuals and armed to the teeth with enough identification documents and references to get into the inner sanctum of the Vatican should we so desire (yeah verily).

Not that we've had cause to deploy this hefty arsenal. Well once only, and we were unsuccessful because I felt compelled to be honest about our cat. Our beloved neurotic cat who, although she is afraid of a cockroach's shadow (not really earning her keep) might still have been a threat to the flock of native birds who had made their home in the garden of this prospective home. I could not bring myself to omit the truth of the cat and thereby possibly be responsible for the death of one of these birds.

So onward we go. Mostly it's a bit of a sticky-beak really. I mean I'm hardly going to allow my child to live in most of the filth we're shown. Be warned if the picture used in the ad is of the view from the kitchen window (the best part of the place is outside of it).

Also beware the fish-lens photos. I don't know who they think is going to be fooled by the stretched out pictures. Who has a toilet that wide? Is the place built for squat hobbit-like people, short and wide? (Well that kind of describes me but I doubt landlords are going to be quite that solicitous.)

Also lately I've noticed an extremely reprimanding tone in the posting of viewing times - 11am SHARP. (Their capitalisation.) I've waited for at least 10 minutes at each sharply advertised viewing time. In my head I compose numerous letters viciously deriding the real estate industry for its lack of common and professional courtesy. And in my head they stay. Who wants to be on a real estate blacklist after all?

I suppose I feel a little bit better about the experience this time around. I've certainly been desperate in the past; particularly at 7 1/2 months pregnant, bawling outside yet another hideous dirty how-can-these-slum-lords-live-with-themselves place also being viewed by 30 others. (Feeling terribly Nativity scene.)

Now I am toting around an utterly adorable and charming child. He loves house hunting. He's very positive about most places too. I guess he's scoping out where his transformers will be sitting and if he can skid on socks from one end of the hall to the other.

But it means that I'm not in direct competition with those who are younger, hipper, more childless. The agent either wants children in the place or they don't. We can pay as well as anyone else. Our references are just as good. So I suppose it will come down to that. Out of my hands really, and what a relief that is.

In the meantime we plough on, the tense short&wide woman, the dazzlingly beautiful (it's my blog after all) cherubic boy and the sullen male with the cap pulled low over his eyes, walking two steps behind and glowering at competitors. Surely any landlord would have us? (Oh and did I mention a cat?)

Flo

On Melancholy

Depression isn't ever going to lift like a curtain. No matter how the chemicals might change, J will always think a certain way about things. I'm starting to think that's the truth of it. Unless he re-learns how to think, how to stop himself in his tracks and think differently every moment of every day, he is always going to behave in a depressed way. The outcomes will always be the same.

Does anybody ever really end up where they thought they were going to? Does anyone imagine they'll grow up to spend endless hours arranging the smallest of details, over and over again?

Fantasies tend to be sketchy on details. In your dreams it's the beach you see (not the bluebottles and the sunscreen, the sand in your swimmers).

But I can cope with the details. I can even enjoy them, particularly when there's a beach involved (less so the bluebottle stings).

In my mind there sticks a snippet of a Keats poem studied in school:

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

I don't need to add much more to these words which perfectly express the interlocked nature of joy and sorrow; except to say that I am not overwhelmed by Melancholy. I know that what is good must end, but equally that other good things will come.

The happiness in my everyday life is sharpened by, prodded into existence even by the not so pleasant stings that inevitably occur.

Flo