Mercurial Thoughts

Even though my kids claim I’m so old that I must have been born at the beginning of time, I am fairly certain the planet Mercury did still orbit around the sun even before I existed. And yet, I’m also equally certain I had no idea that Mercury Retrograde was even a thing until about 10 years ago.

You know Mercury Retrograde? It happens three or four times a year when Mercury appears to be orbiting backwards (spoiler alert: it's not). And this amongst other things, supposedly disrupts our day-to-day plans, and messes with travel and machinery, and makes communication more tricky.

I freely admit to being a Mercury Retrograde skeptic, and I'm supposing that's why this current Mercury Retrograde which started on August 4th, has been robustly whooping my ass.

First, it was the dishwasher. August 5th. I know this because I'd just discovered one of my favorite detective shows had been released.

As Detective shows go, my favorite type are the ones where there’s a brutal murder, but nobody seems terribly upset about it, and they still manage to have a bake sale the next day. Sometimes there's even a second or third murder, and even though there's clearly a serial killer on the loose, people quite happily carry on with flower arrangements for the church fair, or organize a conference for stamp collectors.

Anyway, Mark and I were sitting minding our own business watching the detective show on TV when Lachlan appeared and pointed out that the dishwasher was gushing water all over the kitchen floor.

We congratulated ourselves for being daft enough to buy one of those extended warranties (actually by mistake) and next day we called the Dishwasher Man and he came over almost straight away.

He and Mark pottered around the machine. Dishwasher Man - after some decisive prodding around - said he wasn't sure why it wasn't working properly. Mark pointed him in the direction of some cog under some spinny thing (you can tell I'm the technical one) but Dishwasher Man shook his head doubtfully. Then after prodding around a bit, he announced the machine was fixed. And he left.

And oooh it felt lovely to get all the crap that lives under the kitchen sink, back under the kitchen sink, and the dishes that had been piling up in the countertop into the machine.

That night, smug in the knowledge of a semi-tidy kitchen, we were sitting in front of the TV. We had to wait for the next episode of the brutal murder/bake-sale detective series, so we’d moved on to our next favorite type of detective show. We call them the high heels, tubby guy shows - where there’s a man detective and a lady detective who reluctantly become partners and they have a will they/won’t they relationship. Most of the time though, they're solving crimes. And they’re recognized as being the best in the whole department at catching criminals in any chase, even though she always wears high heels and he is at least 20 lbs overweight.

Anyway, there we were minding our own business when Lachlan appeared and announced that the dishwasher was once again gushing water all over the kitchen floor.

And the Dishwasher Man came again the next day. Mark was out and the Dishwasher Man seemed not to want to speak to me. He stood in the kitchen eying the offending machine suspiciously. No matter what I said, asked, or offered, he ignored me completely. He turned the dishwasher on. It gushed water over the floor. I smiled inwardly, and he said nothing.

Had he been a detective on TV, his enigmatic ways may have been considered enchanting. But he was a guy with a toolbox standing in the middle of my kitchen, and I figured him to be a bit of a jerk.

When Mark arrived home, Dishwasher Man greeted him like an old friend. Mark once again pointed to the cog beside the spinny thing and Dishwasher Man nodded robustly.

Anyway, eventually the dishwasher got fixed. (Spoiler alert: it was indeed the cog beside the spinny thing) and the crap from under the sink was once again under the sink and the countertops were once again semi-dish-free.

But no sooner did that happen, than the fridge freezer joined in with the whole Mercury Retrograde vibe, when the freezer decided unceremoniously to stop freezing. There were no bangs, no flashing lights, no announcement. Just the discomforting presence of droopy pizza and warm frozen peas.

We decided as Dishwasher Man had been so enigmatic, we'd try rebooting it - by switching off and on again and defrosting it along the way - before calling a possibly also enigmatic Fridge-Freezer Man.

So, we took stuff out and crammed most of it into a spare wee fridge we have, and packed whatever else we could into a wee chest freezer.

It was quite liberating actually. There were parts of that fridge and freezer that have lain unexplored for quite a time. I found a pack of corn tortillas that could have qualified for carbon dating.

Anyway, with the fridge freezer empty, we pulled it away from the wall and found that a whole load of paper cups must have fallen off the top of the fridge and were blocking up the air intake for the freezer. Hence why it wasn't working. Mystery solved. A good clear, and clean, and everything started working like a dream.

Good, right? Wrong.

I've knocked my knee out. And it could be Mercury Retrograde, or it could be because I do it periodically.

It's an old pantomime injury from years gone by when I did a striptease as a skeleton taking off my bones - don't even ask. Anyway, I have a dodgy knee and apparently when you close kitchen drawers with your knee or use it to prop open doors when you're carrying stuff, or emptying under the sink, or moving cold stuff between freezers, it messes it up.

And yes I could have soothed it with a pack of frozen peas, were those peas not fricken dripping and defrosted.

And yes, I could have rested it by sitting back and watching some TV. But watching lady detectives run in high heels is actually pretty annoying when wearing flip-flops feels like an achievement.

Besides, all the food from the fridge freezer was packed in all weird places, and needed to be put back.

And yes, Mark could have done it, but here's the thing household appliances don't consider when they're breaking down, which is we still have a living to earn.

We put a podcast out every Monday evening. Mark has a ton of tech stuff to do before it goes. But of course, because we'd spent the last week and the weekend moving shit around the kitchen to accommodate the dishwasher and the fridge freezer, we were running a bit behind.

So I agreed with Mark I'd leave the stuff for him to fix once he'd finished editing. And of course, I was lying. And that's why I was furtively packing stuff back into the freezer when I heard a stream of expletives that made me all nostalgic for the old country.

It seemed his computer had crashed and refused to reboot.

Now like I say, I am a bit of a Retrograde sceptic, but even I know that the point of Mercury retrograde is supposed to give you time to slow down and reflect. Well, ahem excuse me Mercury, but I’d be a lot more fucking reflective if I didn't have to be dealing with everything breaking all the time.

After a coffee and much therapeutic swearing, Mark returned to his computer with fresh eyes and an idea for a solution, and low and behold managed to persuade it to reboot. Turns out it was just a browser issue, though why the computer couldn't have told him that before having a full-on tantrum is anybody's guess.

The next day, podcast out, fridge freezer chilling, computer computing, and dishwasher dishwashering, we decided to take a trip to IKEA to pick up stuff to better organize the kitchen. And because if we stayed in the house longer, we figured something else would break.

I had to take it a little easy because of my pantomime knee injury, so while Mark was dealing with a perfectly lovely Kitchen Cabinet Lady, I sat watching people potter by.

Noticing two women looking at fridge freezers, I thought about how much I take for granted. How much I don't even think about stuff until it breaks.

These women looked remarkably comfortable in their walking ability. I reckoned neither of them had even considered the possibility of a dodgy knee. Though in all fairness neither of them probably did a pantomime strip tease as a skeleton taking off their bones either.

And I thought to myself that when my knee is better I'll appreciate my ability to wander around unhindered. And that I would make more time to appreciate all the things I have in life. And to generally be more grateful.

And then I concluded how that was complete bullshit. A couple of weeks of fridge freezing and dishwashering and perfectly normal knee action, and I'll completely forget these past events because I'd be distracted by something else, and I’ll take the whole kit and caboodle for granted.

And I am OK with that. Because I am not in any way flawless. And clearly, neither is anything or anyone else. Nothing and nobody functions perfectly all the time. And if that is a lesson from Mercury Retrograde, I'll take it. And if it's nothing to do with Mercury whatsoever, I'll take that too.

What I will tell you is that despite being a skeptic, until the end of this retrograde on August 27th, I plan to approach all household appliances with caution.

I also think there should be more detective shows where there's a really brutal murder but nobody is that bothered and so they still have the bake sale. Because who doesn't feel better after that?

Till next week Xo

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