The Omen

"Erm...hi honey," said d when I got home last night.
She smiled a little too brightly, and kissed me.
"Hiiii..." I said, momentarily lulled, as men are when women kiss them. Then reality snapped back into place. "Whatcha doin'?" I asked.
"Nuthin'" said d in a coyish, flirty voice.
"Awww, OK honey," I said, smiling at her, playing along for half a second. "What happened?" I asked then.
She sighed a little.
"I don't know, honestly," she said, shrugging and giving up the cutesy act. She was still plenty cute enough for me. "I came into the bathroom, and it was just...erm..."
She paused.
"What?" I said. "What happened?"
"It's the scales," she said, her voice suggesting that in actual fact it was the scales. It had been the scales. These were scales, I got the feeling that had run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule.
These, in short, were ex-scales.

"Really," she said, almost as though she thought my head was going to explode and I was going to morph all the weight back in the moment of a broken spell or something..."I don't know what happened. I just came into the bathroom and they were...there. Fallen. And when I tried to get them to work, they just...wouldn't. I took the batteries out, rolled them, put them back, but the scales were just...gone."

OK, I thought. The scales committed suicide. They finally got tired of being trodden on by my fat ass, and decided they couldn't face another ten months of this shit. They took their chance, and moved the fuck on to whatever electronic afterlife scales believe in. One with non-corporeal people, presumably, who weigh buggerall at any time.

So - not that I believe in omens, but this seems to be just another sign that our time in London has come to an end. Again, at any other time, this would probably flip me out, because I've been such a whingy git about only using this one particular set of scales as the Official weigh-in recorders, but hey - they died and we're moving out - one less thing to pack, I guess. One more thing to buy, on the other hand...

Which reminds me...We've gone back and forth on this one...Our fridge, whose name is Sven (and why not?), has been the subject of deep debate recently. He's gorgeous and tall and faux-American and was a gift from my folks, and dammit if he's not dying on us too as the time to move out approaches. We've been taking him, and not taking him, and taking him again...

d called me at the office today.
"Erm...hi honey," she said.
"What happened?" I said.
"It's the milk," she said, cutting out a whole round of cutesy as a favour to me.
"What, the milk committed suicide now?"
"Well...kinda," she admitted. "It's turned...again..."

I sighed. This was sadder than the scales. We never named the scales. In fact, come to think of it, I actually stole the scales from a girl I used to work with about two jobs ago. Sven had a personality. And he hasn't committed suicide - Sven's a stayer. But it's kinda like...you know how sometimes, with a beloved elderly relative, you go round one day and they're not exactly tracking the conversation like they were. And then, just as you go to leave, you notice a faint...uriney...smell about the place...

That's Sven.
He wants to stay with us. We love him dearly. But frankly if he was a human we'd be taking him to a clinic in Switzerland right about now. If we tried to move him to Wales now, and carry him up a flight of stairs, and lift him over a narrow balcony, I think he'd just give up the ghost and slip away in a puddle of turned milk and set his freon free.

So I think we've finally made a decision. We're gonna leave Sven here, dribbling gently, for whoever the Hell takes over this place when we've gone. We're gonna remember him fondly, and hope the new people treat him kindly. And actually, we hope he talks to them as though they're us, and just confuses the fuck out of them. That's a good way to remember our Sven. The scales - meh. Time to go online shopping...