Saturday morning in my street

I haven't mentioned much about where I live or who lives around me, probably because it may all seem politically incorrect. But heck, I will anyway, coz today is the stereotypical day in my street.

In the townhouse adjoining mine are a gay couple. They seem nice enough, but I've really only talked to one of them a few times. I hear them a lot though, because our bedrooms back onto each other. I won't say much more on this, except that if I can hear them, I am sure they can hear me...

On my other side, is a house that is about to fall down and a Chinese family abodes there. I don't see them often, but they did mow my front footpath and clean up the leaves (from their tree!) off my driveway, so maybe I should thank them eventually.

Further up the street is mostly older European families - Italian etc - who are all renovating and rebuilding some lovely houses. This seems to me to be the normal part of the street - the kind of street I'm used to living in and the kind of street I thought I was moving into.

But across the road from me is housing commission. How I never noticed this the three times I came to look at this place before I moved in, I'll never know. On the corner is an African family who I rarely see. I know he's a taxi driver. Next door to them is a dual occupancy house - well two houses joined right down the middle. It's directly across from me. In one is what seems to be a relatively normal group of people, mostly young women, but I've seen some kids there too.

Beside them is an Aboriginal family. I haven't worked out (and I've been here since Feb) who lives there or how many there are. One of these days though, the current affairs programs will turn up in my street. I know it! These people drink so much and fight so long and so loud, I cannot comprehend how the women next door manage to stay there. I've been upstairs in my bedroom and the younger (I assume) Aboriginal guys have thumped the walls of the house so hard I honestly thought the place would fall down. I've felt the knocks from my place! They also like to play music loudly - late at night. But not just any old music in any old way. I've heard a lot of Nelly...well a lot of one song. See, they'll play a few bars of the song, stop it, start it at the beginning again, let it play for a bit, stop it, back to the beginning, play the whole thing, stop, start etc etc etc, over and over for up to a few hours at a time.

I joked one day that they would kill each other. A week later, I came home from work one afternoon and found two police cars, two ambulances and a police van outside my place and their place. The ambulance guys were standing around on the street looking perplexed, while the police tried to get the woman into the ambulance. All the while, she's yelling, "and if he ever f***ing comes back, I'll kill him meself". I figured I didn't need the police asking me stuff, so I went to the supermarket at that stage. When I got back, they were all still there, but had managed to get all the battered bodies off the street.

I woke up this morning and thought I was in the Land of Oz and I'd become Dorothy, coz I could hear the Aboriginal family (did I mention they're loud) laughing and seemingly having a good time and it sounded like they were having some sort of bbq get-together. I've never heard them happy and I certainly haven't heard them in the morning before, so it was a bit surreal. But by the time I got home from the shops and the naturopath, they were back to fighting, drinking and yelling again. Normality in my street had returned.

Speaking of the naturopath, all this food weighing, drinking foul concoctions and peeing on sticks seems to be paying off finally, coz I lost a kilo this week, despite falling off the wagon a few times. He's given me some magnesium to take, because he seems to think this will stop all the headaches I've been getting. Apparently weight training uses a lot of magnesium, so I need to replace it more often now that my gym routine is mostly weights. This time though, it's a chalk that actually disolves in water and tastes a whole lot better than the last stuff too.

He also added to the list of foods I could eat, which is good, because I'm about over celery and carrots. Aaand I bought a box of protein bars, which to me, look and taste just like the bottom half of a Snickers bar. He says eating these doesn't count towards the amount of protein/carbs I have to weigh etc. In that case, I might just ditch the rabbit food weighing and live on these bars for a while! So good to be allowed to eat something covered in chocolate!! :-)

I still have to weigh food for another week till I get the hang of how big the portions should be, and my bathroom is starting to look like a pharmacy display unit, but I feel better about doing this whole thing now.

The Aboriginal family is quiet right now... February can't come soon enough, and I'll be outta here!