August has set in as a mean and nasty month determined to eliminate my savings by disrupting my timetable and encouraging everyone to stop work and suspend meetings so I don't get paid. I knew this might happen but July lulled me into a false sense of security that nothing too bad would really occur. Now I'm haemorrhaging meet-ees at a rate of knots and I'm getting little warning of it, so my timetable lies in tatters and my sleep pattern is screwed and I end up being exhausted as a result, even when I've had a little bit more sleep than usual.
I even mistakenly finished a meeting almost half an hour early today and sent my meet-ee on her way ahead of time due to this lapse in brain function. But she's not coming back till September now (or never) so I'll have time to get over my embarrassment. I really am losing the plot due to all these re-arrangements. I can't be trusted to know what day of the week it is, let alone what time I'm due to finish a meeting.
And to cap it all, I am in that stage of longing for things to get a bit easier because I've been so careful all month not to spend too much money and to keep accepting new meet-ees even at inconvenient times. A month of doing this has ensured I can pay the rent, but little else. This is just at a time when I am being reminded one way or another how normal people with disposable incomes live. Those kinds of people could treat themselves to a flamboyant glass vase and some flowers to put in it, or some new underwear, shoes and bags. Those kinds of people do not have to re-sew a gaping hole in the bag they've had for about three years, use old wine bottles as either candlesticks or vases (or both) and scrounge paper from their boyfriend's office from time to time because notebooks are getting rather pricey these days. The same kinds of people do not need to worry about whether they've got enough money to take the metro a second time this week or if they've been hasty in thinking they could afford to try that pilates class with a friend on Thursday.
What a weight must be taken from your shoulders when none of those things are any great concern. What great levity is theirs to be able to afford clothes from high street shops and not just charity shops (or 'boutiques', as the Swedish fairy godmother creatively calls them) and be able to go for a coffee and slice of cake afterwards. Why is the fact that I am not one of those people and that I have no hope of ever being one of those people, unless I can radically change my career (and we all know how well that's been going over the last twelve years or so, don't we?) such a hauntingly troublesome, and indeed traumatic, thought for me?
In light of all of this, I did what I always do: I did my aerobics to Madonna songs and pranced around like a teenager who's convinced she is Madonna (with a certain amount of flair, I might add...) and proved to myself that even if I'm a total failure, I can still do high kicks and fast turns and salsa dancing moves like a pro. Don't say I'm not at least trying to stay fit as long as possible to, if nothing else, give myself a few extra years to pretend that there's still hope for me and my career aspirations yet.
A fool and his money may well soon be parted, but a fool and her pipe-dreams are, on the other hand, rarely prised apart. At least not for long enough to prevent her from ever dancing to Madonna's very own divorce song, 'Til Death Do Us Part' (featuring expertly mimed reaction to being hit in the face [or 'contemporary dance interpretation' of] to coincide with the breaking glass sound-effect) again.
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