Going home

A nap on that couch sounds glorious.

On Fridays I cosplay what it would be like to be independently wealthy. Everyone else at work, me sufficiently financed to do whatever. My dad day started a little before six. For once, I woke up before my alarm and then went to my strength class with my trainer. After a sweaty 30 minutes I drove home, wasted no time getting into an argument with Sam, still bleary eyed, and then put on my headphones and tidied the house.

I wiped down the kitchen counters, unleashed the Little Guy (our vacuum robot thing) upon the wooden floors in the lounge, sprayed the dining and coffee table with the new Good For The Planet™ furnisher spray I got from Woolies. I took down and folded the laundry. Delivered a neat pile of Sam’s clothes to his bed and placed mine in my cupboard. I gathered plates and packed the dishwasher.

I opened my work laptop and did Just One Thing. I opened my personal laptop and did some tax admin. So boring to say, but fuck tax admin is endless.

I am at home, so deeply, deeply at home – in my home, in service of my home and still, I have the nagging feeling that I need to go home.

I text Mom to see if she’s free this afternoon, I ask if I can come over. A nap on that couch sounds glorious.

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I suggest we watch Rivals. Why? I think someone was talking about it on the radio while I was driving over, it was when I was passing Wynberg Girls, then crossing the road towards Maynardville – funny how we can remember what we saw when we heard a thing. I can’t remember what they said about it, still no idea what it’s about, even after reading the bio, but my recollection is positive.

‘Let’s watch one episode? If we hate it we can try something else.’

‘Sure.’

There is a lot of sex. Gratuitous sex. But nothing can be worse than watching Black Swan in the cinema together when I was a teenager. You know which scene I’m talking about.

‘They cast that guy cause his character takes his shirt off a lot.’ Mom says as she takes another bite of pizza.

‘Yeah, and this other guy is really fit.’

‘Yeah. I didn’t think so at first, but now I can see his whole thing.’ (Not his penis)

‘The moustache threw me in the beginning.’ I say through my own mouthful of pizza.

‘What?’

‘Not a fan of the moustache.’

‘Right. Yeah.’

We watch several episodes. Mom on her couch, me on mine. At some point Kitty wanders in through the window and we try to coax her to hang out with us, psst psst pssting and trying to position her brush in an inviting positioning. She is mildly convinced. She hops up and naps on the back of the couch behind Mom.

We top up our plates with another slice of pizza. Mom makes a pot of coffee and brings us each a slice of the shortbread she got earlier from the cafe near the shop where she works.

‘You ready?’

‘Yeah.’

I press play.

Photo by Dương Nhân