You left your coffee beans in

Our suburb has a vigilante residents’ Facebook page. It’s fucking ace. Like, not the vigilante aspect – that’s quite disturbing – but the fact that humans allow themselves to be riled by the smallest and most inconsequential acts. That’s gold. 

Once, a woman took to our vigilante residents’ Facebook page to bemoan the VERY LOUD family that disturbed her viewing of Today Tonight every evening at 6.30pm. At first I panicked, because I HAVE A VERY LOUD FAMILY, but once I’d established that she lived far away from my VERY LOUD FAMILY, I relaxed and enjoyed the ride. 

Another time, a teenager was witnessed littering. The crowd went wild, baying for said teenager’s head on a stick. No actual shit. One woman suggested that the littering teenager in question should be “strung up”. And while YES, I abhor littering as much as the next human, I felt that the punishment was a little extreme, no? 

And then there was the time someone was caught on CCTV pinching a lemon. The threats directed to this citrus-loving human still make me giggle. Cos really – a public lynching? For nicking a LEMON? What have we BECOME?

This week, our suburb’s vigilante residents’ Facebook page took crazed excellence to a new level. At 7.01am on Thursday, an extremely cross gentleman took to the page to declare that local residents should BEWARE, because he’d just chased off a TWAT IN A SLOW-MOVING VEHICLE, undoubtedly scoping out properties to rob. At 7.02am, an extremely bewildered gentleman took to the SAME page to declare that he’d just been chased by an extremely cross gentleman who’d threated to KICK HIS HEAD IN for DRIVING SLOWLY TO WORK. I’m still laughing about this. I fucking love idiots. 

Both my mother and my husband had to pretend to be Alice’s teacher last night. Alice worked herself into a small state because she thought she’d have to get changed from her dancing clothes into her uniform at school, and that someone might see her “insides”. I said I was SURE that the lovely teacher would not force Alice to show her insides unnecessarily, but Alice remained unconvinced. “Do you want me to ring your lovely teacher?” “Yes I do.” “Okay I will.” I rang my mum, and put her on loudspeaker. “HELLO, is that Alice’s teacher?” God bless my mum, she thought fast, and said “YES IT IS” in a polite lady voice, but Alice was on to us. Her howls got louder as she cried IT’S NANNYYYYYYY. Then it was Paul’s turn, and TO HIS CREDIT, he did an even better teacher lady voice than Nanny. It didn’t work, and I was forced to write up and down my arm – in green texta – “Remind Alice’s teacher that Alice does not want to show her insides to either of her three boyfriends.” Sigh. 

Frankie (6) has a penchant for hip hop, r ‘n’ b and bad rap – in particular that TERRIBLE Chris Brown and Little Dickie song, in which one goes into the other’s body. It’s BAD. It also contains the n word, on repeat. We’ve told Frankie that he can’t use the n word because he’s not black. According to that theory, he reckons, Alice SHOULD be able to use the n word, because she IS. She’s not, she’s just olive skinned. 

My nan walked right in on me having a shower yesterday. The shower was making a funny noise, and she came in to see what the noise was. I was, like, NAN, not cool! She refused to budge until I’d given her a full explanation re: the state of our pipes. Not cool, Nan. 

Imagine, if you will, being married to an anti-hoarding minimalist freak. And then, if you will, imagine being the daughter of a hoarding anti-waste super freak. And THEN, if you will, imagine being stuck in the middle of these two freaks. Basically, Paul (my husband) throws EVERYTHING away. He’d throw YOU away if you stood still for too long. Mum (my mother), now that she’s retired, spends her spare time going through our bins to reclaim the shit that’s Paul thrown away that week. Not the recycling bin – the GREEN bin; she digs through potato peelings and soggy teabags to retrieve old t-shirts and underpants “to give to the poor children”. Those poor fucking poor children must dread the sight of my mother approaching with her over-stuffed car-boot of soiled undergarments. In fairness to my mother, she doesn’t ALWAYS give away our cast-offs to the poor children. Once, not that long ago, we went round to my parents’ house and mum was WEARING – fucking WEARING – an old, worn-out t-shirt that Paul had been using to clean the car with for at least a year. 

So anyway, you can IMAGINE the state of panic that my mother is in knowing that we have a SKIP this weekend. A fucking skip! Paul’s walking around the house with a crazed look of wild excitement in his eyes. He’s going to fill that skip, by hook or by crook. As we pile item upon item upon child into the skip, we say “MAKE SURE IT’S COVERED PROPERLY” because we both know full well that my mum will be fucking IN IT as soon as she’s finished afternoon tea with her friend Norma. 

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, our coffee machine of eight years broke this morning, which meant we had one more beautiful item to put in the skip. I mean, it’s BROKEN, you know? Like, FUCKED, beyond repair. She couldn’t complain about that, could she? It went on top. Complain about that, MOTHER, I dare you. An hour later, I get a message: “YOU LEFT YOUR COFFEE BEANS IN.” FFS.