I’ve hardly touched my computer this week - this is due to M and I being determined to finish the house in the quickest possible time. It is also due to my extreme politeness - instead of spending my nights on tweaking webpages and blogging, I have been hostessly - playing new card games, reclining on the couch and being generally conversational. Small Brother is being very handy to have around - he and M have built a very cute little laundry, which will help the house along, and now he is working on a path to the front steps.

Unfortunately the progress of the house has me to contend with. Our back room has two walls of louvre windows. They are manky, to put it mildly. I decided that my first assault on finishing the house would begin in this room. We painted it a year ago, but it is now coated almost entirely with bugs and the louvres have never been cleaned. Think of the dirtiest windows you can, and then multiply the dirt by seven. So I took out one wall of louvres and washed them all, chipped of paint splashes etc. but almost as soon I’d taken out the first lot I realised how disgusting the frames were. Rusty, cobwebby bleugh. So I found some KillRust: Superior Protection Epoxy Enamel - it’s very cool, because it’s silver - so I thought I would make the frames look new. I also thought that I’d better begin doing this while M and Small Brother were at the tip, because I knew M would frown on it as ‘unecessary’ and ‘too time consuming and fiddly’. That was my first transgression. But really, that’s nothing compared to what I did next.

The house is pretty filthy - a combination of all the sand that we’ve spread around outside, general dust and accumulated debris. Last night - after a very exhausting day, I decided to do a quick vacuum to get rid of the worst of the sand. I did the back room, the kitchen, dining room and a bit of the lounge. It was then I noticed a lot of scratches had appeared on our beautiful polished floor. In fact, they had appeared everywhere I had vack-ed. OMG. I was in BIG trouble. Not only had I trashed our lovely floor, but I had trashed our lovely floor that M had sweated blood over. M came in just as Small Brother and I had cracked open a stubby of Coopers Sparkling each. I set my jaw and grimly owned up to what I’d done.
“Don’t worry about it darlin’,” said M, “it’ll be fine.”
My whole body sagged in relief. We played cards, watched Kath & Kim and, sat there horrified, as M consumed vast amounts of beer, the stinkiest blue cheese you can imagine, and some sardines. I instructed him not to come to bed before bonding closely with some Listerine.

The first words I heard His Stinkieth utter when he walked out of the bedroom into the dining room were anguished.
“Oh noooooooo.”
I immediately assumed that I’d walked in my sleep, emptied the teapot down the sink, and blocked the drain again.
M came back and put me straight. He was pale, breathing erratically.
“I’ve just seen what you did to the floor. How could you?”
He left the bedroom and I looked heavenward, waiting for a lightning bolt to wipe me out - or at least hospitalise me for a week or two. Nothing happened.
For the rest of the morning M did not speak to me - and when he did, he addressed me like I was a Liberal politician who had mistakenly stumbled on to the property. I felt bad.
Then he came and explained that he felt like I had taken his Humber out and crashed it. I felt worse.
I offered to lick each scratch, individually. (They seem to disappear a little with a combination of dust and spit.) M shook his head. He and Small Brother disappeared to check the crab pots. I don’t know what happened there, but when they came back, M said he was sorry for how he had treated me, that he knew it wasn’t my fault, but I was still an idiot for not noticing sooner. I looked big sad dolphin eyes at him. He reiterated the Humber analogy. I slumped further earthwards. Then he made me a cup of tea, we kissed and made up. Mostly.

Just after that, Small Brother came into the kitchen.
“I’ve booked your skydive for 10am tomorrow morning,” he said.
M looked musingly at me.
“You’re going to jump out of a plane at ten thousand feet?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Good.”