Lisa's knees and toes poked out of the water no matter what she did. As soon as she relaxed, up they'd pop, as though tied to balloons. She hoped that the ocean was just especially saline here, and not that she had fat feet.

The sea was calm, the weather was beautiful, and she was floating just far enough from the shore that she could put her feet down without getting her hair wet. She'd been pleased to discover that her swimming costume still fit this year, just about, and she remembered to bring her big pink "Beach Bum!" towel, dotted with little bikini bottoms, that normally served as an ironing board on her bed. Aside from an elderly couple snoozing under an umbrella she had the place to herself. She closed her eyes and spread out like a starfish, just for a moment.

She could hear a group of kids crunching across the stones, getting closer. They soon had swapped sandals for boogie boards and began the traditional English sea-entering dance: the first step elicits a gasp, which becomes progressively more elaborate the deeper the bather ventures, combining squeaks, shivers, squeals, and exclamations of 'Cor! Blimey!' until the armpits are submerged, after which one turns to their friends and declares, 'Ooh, it's nice once you're in!' These particular children were all trying to instruct one another at once where they'd catch the best waves, growing louder and more irritable as none listened to any other, until the boogie boards inevitably began to slap water and the yelling began. A sudden cascade doused her hair, making her jump.

Lisa tried to paddle away from the din, but found herself rooted to the spot by the undertow. Strange, she thought. It's been like glass out here for over an hour. Are we in for...? she turned around. Sure enough, a big wave was approaching fast. She glanced over her shoulder and confirmed that the kids were still completely engrossed in attacking one another.

She reclined back onto the surface of the water, gently riding over the swell. She patted it affectionately as it passed.

"Go get 'em, Tiger."

Lisa watched as the wave doubled in size and began to curl, and smiled when she heard it break.

"If you were bowling for teenagers, I reckon that's a strike!"

Lisa was looking in the mirror, trying to make a plan for the day and vaguely considering her eyebrows. They were fine, really, but her mother's voice in her head was nevertheless accusing her of looking like an unmade bed so she picked up the tweezers.

"Oop, there's that white one again. I guess you're not just a fluke." she muttered at an eyebrow hair that looked like it came off a toothbrush. She dithered again over whether to pull it. She was determined to approach ageing with dignity, but there was literally just one right now. "Maybe I should keep tweezing it until I have, like, five, and it looks less out of place." she posited to her reflection.

Her reflection offered no opinion, which was probably for the best. She didn't look like someone who's opinion Lisa would want to hear.

She pulled the brow, but reassured herself that she wasn't pretending to turn back the clock. "It just looks more balanced this way." She went to put the tweezers down but stopped short.

The six white hairs growing from her right her temple glowed at her in the sunshine, and looked like they might have made some friends. Was there one on the left now? Her fingers reached to separate them, her breath fogging the mirror.

She backed away. No. No! Dignity. Just embrace it, Lisa. Don't be mum. Just accept it. They're fine. They're nice! Nobody cares. You don't care. Stop caring.

She placed the tweezers firmly on the counter, then made made firm eye contact with her reflection. See? You can do it.

Right then. Coffee.

Lisa made a beeline for the pet food aisle the moment she arrived in the grocery store. It was a busy Saturday but luckily most of the old dears were doddering in the produce area, squeezing the fruit and tutting but out of the way.

She slowed her pace as the racks of cartoon cats gave way to smiling dogs. She found it a bit unsettling when manufacturers edited out dogs' teeth to make them appear less threatening on packaging. Her Golden had a cute smile, canines and all.

She selected the biggest pack she could carry of her pup's preferred flavour and tried to remember if she was out of treats. As usual her mind went blank. There were either five bags of beef nibbles in the pantry or none. She tucked a small packet between her fingers just in case.

Fully laden, she turned round and properly noticed what was on the other side of the aisle. Sudocrem. Sterilising tablets. Jars and pouches of purées that looked slightly less appetising than the contents of the bag in her arms. One way or another Sainsbury's was going to get you into aisle 8.

She grinned when she noticed that the nappies were stacked directly opposite the cat litter, and the similarly-displayed chew toys would probably work for either.

"See, it's normal for these mascots to not have teeth!" she muttered to herself.

Lisa managed to pay and scoot out of the store just in time to hop onto a 440 towards home, where she gave Lisa a good scritch before tucking the pouch of treats behind the other 5.

Lisa pulled the jar of nutmegs off the shelf. She was alarmed to see there was only one left.

'Gracious.' she thought. 'I never truly believed I'd see this day.'

She had bought a 400g bag of whole nutmegs from the local Turkish store at least ten years ago. She thought it tasted better freshly grated, she used it in everything at the holidays, and the big bag cost the same as she'd pay for 30g at Tesco. Her mother had teased her at the time that she'd need to have kids so someone could inherit it from her, as that was more than a lifetime supply.

Over the years they'd gone from the bag, to a large canister, to a smaller canister, and finally a standard spice jar that once held paprika, but she too never really imagined she would use it all.

She held the last nut over the mug and abraded it with the tiny box grater she kept for this purpose. A generous dusting of warm spice floated down onto the coffee, momentarily making the kitchen feel festive.

She picked up the coffee mug and went to go sit in the comfy chair, pausing by the shopping list on the fridge to write 'nutmeg - whole'.

The cashier smiled at Lisa as she scurried in from the rain.

"Welcome back! Did you like the Saffron tester pot?" she asked, earnestly, from her kiosk.

"I do, but I'm still on the fence." Lisa admitted. "It's a lot of colour. I mean, a Lot."

"Oh don't chicken out, miss! A splash of bold colour can really brighten your day. I have a persimmon feature wall in my living room that I still just love, five years on."

Lisa remembered when everyone seemed to be doing feature walls in the 'teens, around the same time that new buyers started making a point to paint their exterior trim 'Gentrification Grey' to distinguish themselves from the folks who had lived here since it was a cheap, working-class neighbourhood.

Lisa's house had ordinary, somewhat grubby, white trim.

"What would you paint the rest, if you just did the saffron on one wall?" Lisa asked.

"Oh a farmhouse sage is the obvious contrast colour, but the world is your oyster, really. I've seen it pop against a creamy burnt umber, or a translucent robin egg, or . . ."

Lisa smiled and nodded while an increasingly florid set of words flitted around her like butterflies, evoking textures and smells and creatures that were equally as likely to complement the shade of yellow she'd smeared next to the light-switch as they were to fry into a posh omelet. The twentysomething in the hi-vis tabard eventually seemed to want a reply.

"Oh, yes. Hmm. Well. That gives me a lot of great ideas." Lisa blinked a few times. "Truth be told I came here for a tub of filler. A big chunk of plaster fell off while I was sanding this morning. I'm still not quite ready to choose paint."

"Of course." the cashier changed gears like a Formula 1 driver. "Aisle 4, next to the sugar soap."

Lisa thanked her and squelched across the shop.

The sponge dripped straight into the parting of Lisa's hair.

'Yuck,' she muttered to herself, but there was no point in wiping at it. The slurry of ancient wallpaper paste and paint would have to wait for the shower.

This part of the process was still cleaner than the initial scrape she'd done yesterday, which took off the top layer of postwar woodchip and distributed dust in an even layer over everything in her home, including her sinuses and her dog. Golden Lisa had been relegated to the garden for most of that process, but it had started to rain. Luckily she enjoyed being Hoovered.

She tucked the sponge under her shoe, took the scraper out from her teeth, and gently scooched it at the next layer.

Schk schk schk. . . shhhhhhhhhk

A long, wide strip peeled off in that most satisfying of ways.

She dropped it onto the tarpaulin under her ladder with a splut. She began to pick at another corner.

Schk schk schk. . . shhk. Smaller this time. Splut.

Schk schk schk plop.

A blob of century-old wallpaper landed in Lisa's tea.

She considered accepting her mother's offer of a weekend getaway by the seaside.

Suzy on Reception had given her the hairy eyeball when she came to retrieve her parcel, and Lisa had apologised profusely, but she didn't actually feel bad. This was the first personal item she'd had delivered to work in years. Cara in HR was forever filling up the lobby with bags going to and from Asos and no one eyeballed her about it.

Norman had helped her shove the box into her giant canvas grocery bag, which required enough shimmying and jiggling that they both nearly broke a sweat. At the time she'd worried that she'd have to cut the bag to get it out, but weirdly it plopped onto her bedroom carpet with ease. After a few moments of sawing at the tape with her keys she was delighted to reveal a wooden jewellery box pretty enough to display on her dresser.

In an effort to avoid the process becoming bittersweet, Lisa turned her old paper box upside-down on the bed and dumped everything out in a heap. A few dried flowers crumbled to dust on impact, and she realised she had no idea where they'd come from. She scooped them up onto an exhibitor pass from a particularly soul-crushing 2007 conference and threw the whole lot into the bin.

Doubt gripped her. Maybe that lanyard could be useful for something? She had to stop her hand from fishing it back out. No. It's been in there for ten years and you haven't needed it yet. You neither want nor need a souvenir from Düsseldorf.

She wedged her small collection of rings between the foam sausages in the top tray. There was only one really nice one, she knew: a cocktail ring bequeathed to her by her grandmother. She arranged the cheap silver ones and even cheaper silver-plated ones around it like sentries.

A particularly wide copper-coloured one wouldn't fit easily. On closer inspection she realised it was actually something that had been left under the sink by the plumber. She must have tucked in there while on auto-pilot. After a moment's consideration she wedged it in anyway. It looked nice enough.

Sixteen years said a little voice in the back of her mind.

She glanced at the heap of lanyards and ID tags still tangled on the duvet, steeled her resolve, and swept all of them into the bin.

On tab 14 (of at least 37) Lisa paused to review a listing for a jewellery box. She'd spent at least half an hour with a butter knife trying to jimmy open the stuck drawer on hers, the thrice-reglued knob having finally vanished into the cracks in the floorboards (or worse, into the dog). She had to concede it was time to replace it.

"Glass and wood, antique vintage, gently used. . . Oh come on, I remember when these were all the rage in the 90's. They're practically new."

She recalled spinning the little wire necklace rack in the ceiling of Michelle's one when they were teenagers with a pang of lingering envy: partly for her real-silver jewellery, but mostly for her grown-up jewellery box with glass windows and real velvet lining. It had made her want to hide her white cardboard one with the little ballerina that spun around to the Overture to Swan Lake, plinking far too fast and completely out of tune when you wound it up. The drawer was mostly filled with pressed pennies and marbles back then. Now it contained mostly conference lanyards and ID tags, but she had managed to secure a couple of nice rings and bracelets over the years.

Still a bit miffed about the product title, she Googled 'how old is antique' and was reassured by a knowledgable-sounding blurb: "An antique is between 100 and 300 years old; anything older would be called an antiquity."

She would have stayed reassured had she stopped reading there. Alas, the paragraph continued. "Anything between 20 and 99 years old can be fairly called "vintage".

It was cold out and Lisa considered wearing a hat so her ears wouldn't freeze as she walked from the parking garage to her office. She thought about the knit stocking cap that her brother had gotten her for Christmas. But what would it do to her blowout? Would it exacerbate the problem she had with static electricity in the winter? Did the hat really flatter her? She hated the idea of choosing style over comfort but she would have to spend all day at the office with a bad hair day if the hat wrecked her hair. She sighed. The walk from the parking garage wasn't so far. Maybe if she slicked her hair back with gel and wore a braid down her back then the hat would work but there was not time for that today. Her dog Lisa barked twice as if in agreement. No hat. As a compromise, she grabbed a scarf on the way out, figuring she could wrap it in a manner that protected her ears if necessary.

Lisa repositioned her arm under the pillow and tried to work some feeling back into her fingertips. Ruddy carpal-tunnel syndrome, she thought, and squeezed her eyelids closed.
Right. Five animal names that start with R. Er.. Rhinoceros. Robin. Er. Remora. Yuck. Two more. Hmm.
She flipped over her phone, just to look at the time on the lock screen.
If I get to sleep right...NOW I'll get five hours. Five hours is enough, right? She felt her heart rate begin to speed up. Do I need to do another PCR if someone coughs near me on the train? Has HR found anyone to cover for Nigel yet? I can't keep managing his accounts on top of mine for much longer, I'll crack, I just know it, Carol has got to...Oh bloody hell, come on brain. R. Remora. Ruuuhhh...Radula? No, that's part of a snail. R... She had forgiven herself for not making it to five Q's, as while she was pretty confident that a quetzal was a type of bird, she couldn't remember if a quince was a type of fish or a fruit, and it took all her restraint to not turn the phone on to look it up, so she'd just moved on.
Ugh, last night I was out like a light before I got to C. Red-tailed hawk. But I already did Hawk back in the H's...Sod it.
She rolled over and considered skipping forward to S. There were a lot of S animals.

Lisa had a bit of wine before dinner. This put her in a jauntier mood than usual, and she decided to queue up some dance music whilst making dinner.

She didn’t usually listen to dance music, so she just typed “happy dance music” in the YouTube search bar. The first few results had slightly effeminate-looking men in the pictures and lots of views. She picked one at random and let it play as she cooked a bit of fish in her slippers and pajama bottoms.

The music was really bouncy and made Lisa feel happy, so she danced about the kitchen as she put dinner together. She hardly noticed that she had downed two more glasses of wine before it was ready to eat.

Hmm, she thought as she sat down to eat her fish and steamed broccoli, gay is a good word for this music. It sounds so happy.

She thought momentarily about calling Norman and inviting him over for another glass of wine, then laughed at herself. It’s just the wine talking, she thought.

Still, she could have called Norman if she’d wanted to, and that made her feel happy, too.

Lisa went to bed a little early and was smiling as she fell asleep.

Lisa had already purchased all of her Christmas gifts for others in advance. She especially hoped Norman would like the custom mug she had ordered him with an adorable picture of him holding his cat, Norman, on it. Now there were just two more gifts to buy: one for her pup, Lisa, and one for herself. She had gotten Lisa a bone-shaped chew toy for her birthday and a nice, fluffy dog bed for Christmas last year.
She wanted to do something different this year. Would Lisa wear a dog sweater? She remember the ill fate of the dog beanie she had gotten three years ago for Lisa. That beanie ended up as a chew toy. Lisa was stumped. There were only so many things she could get a dog. Then she remembered the new dog bakery (or "barkery") that had opened a few blocks from her office. She would go to the barkery and get Lisa some tasty biscuits and maybe a cupcake on her lunch break.
Now Lisa just needed to purchase something for herself. Lisa liked that she always gave herself a birthday and Christmas gift. Why not? It is good to like yourself and treat yourself well. Lisa thought long and hard about what she wanted. Often she was frugal with her money. Her parents had always taught her the value of saving money growing up and she felt it was foolish to blow cash on frivolous things when you might need the money for something important another time.

Lisa found herself browsing the Sephora website on her phone. She did not usually shop at Sephora. She wore very little makeup and everything there seemed to be priced far too high for what it was. But Lisa did love scented candles. She enjoyed the way they could make her house smell like the ocean or an evergreen forest in the mountains or even a scrumptious dessert. After searching through many candles that seemed to be too perfume-based, she found herself focusing on a vegan wax candle that was supposed to smell like lavender and lemon. That combination seemed soothing. She would put it in her bedroom to make her room smell nice before going to sleep.
"I'll have to set a reminder on my Alexa to blow out the candle before bed so it isn't a fire risk" she thought to herself.

Well, she was already planning for candle safety. Might as well go ahead and buy it. She winced a little as she checked out with the nearly $50 candle but it was rare for her to splurge on herself.

"I deserve it," she said aloud before moving on with her day.

lisadogs29 returned an incorrect password message. Lisa scratched her head. How about lisadogs28?

Nope.

Lisa sighed. She knew she shouldn't have picked a password with numbers. Resetting her password was the only thing she could do. "Something simpler and easier this time," Lisa thought, before sheepishly settling on ilovenorman. Now this is something she wouldn't forget!

New password can not be your old password, the website replied, dryly.

Lisa began to feel off-kilter a few hours after her second vaccine dose, which filled her with dread. Was this vertigo? She figured some paracetamol might help, so she pushed back her chair to go to her handbag.

Or rather, tried to push back her chair. It got stuck, and she wound up performing a rather ungainly waddle to extract her knees from under her desk. Once freed she looked to see what it had caught on, and discovered that one of the wheels had fallen out.

She popped the wheel back in and sat down to test it. She discovered, much to her relief, that the vertigo had gone away. Lisa chuckled to herself. I really was off-kilter!

Lisa lay in bed, feeling lousy. She read the leaflet again:

Side effects may include fever, pain at the injection site, and flu-like symptoms. These should get better in two to three days.

She shivered and pulled her blanket tighter, then took it off again, and considered sipping the glass of water on the bedside table, but couldn't bring herself to roll over. She tried very hard to feel grateful for having gotten her covid vaccine this early, but she mostly just wanted to throw up.

Lisa the dog whimpered and looked sympathetic, curled up close but not touching her on the bed. Lisa rested her hand on her head and drifted back to sleep.

It was right behind the pretty daffodils and chrysanthenums she had put there last season. Lisa grabbed her gardening gloves and went out to remove them.

(Lisa's cat looked at the flowers scornfully with aversion and disdain. She had learned the hard way that she was allergic to pollen.)

"Aren't you a sweet little thing?" Lisa murmured to her flowers as she uprooted the weeds.

After she had cleared up the weeds and thrown them away, she wiped the sweat off her forhead as she went inside to snort up the rest of her cocaine.

Lisa opened the bathroom drawer and sighed at the small trove of make-ups that rattled into view. She turned over a lipstick tube and found the symbol of a tub around the number 12. Damn. She'd opened it just a few weeks before Lockdown, but hadn't left the house without a mask in months. She took off the lid and thought it smelled funny, though if she was honest she couldn't remember what that brand normally smelled like. After a moment to gather her resolve, she unhooked the drawer from its tracks and tipped the whole contents into the bin.

"Oh shit!" Lisa said to Lisa, as the lightbulb on the wall flickered dimly. It was getting dark outside and she had to change the bulb, or else spend the rest of the evening in darkness.

Lisa grabbed a new bulb she had brought from N-Mart a few months ago and climbed on her chair to replace the bulb. "Ouch!" The bulb was still pretty hot. "Now which way does the bulb come out?" Lisa asked Lisa, who just gave a little meow, apparently enjoying these petty inconveniences her owner was facing.

After a rather long time (by bulb-replacing standards), Lisa had finally installed the new bulb on the wall. Patting her own back, she got off the chair and flicked the switch ON.

Lisa waited for a couple of seconds, but nothing happened. It was still dark.

"Meow."

"Yep." Lisa agreed. The new bulb didn't work either.

"This isn't half as bad." Lisa mused, as she lit a couple of candles. The cat watched silently, the candlelight reflecting in her pretty green eyes.

Lisa could have sworn she heard the pen hit the floor of her workspace, but as she turned down to look for it, there was nothing except candy wrappers and post it notes.

Lisa sighed. "It's the fifth pen that disappeared this year", she muttered as she pulled out a new ball pen from the packet.

Lisa noticed a sale on. She weighed various options and in particular, she dwelled on colour selection. Nothing so outlandish as to unsettle the office. Beige seemed the safest choice. Within a few weeks her parcel arrived and she wore her new garment to work. She felt quite chuffed when no one notice her new beige garment. The office remained thankfully unawares and went on as before.

After she carefully wrapped the chocolate with a red satin ribbon, she timidly walked over to Norman's empty desk. She placed it over his accounting ledgers and went back to her seat.

Lisa waited for a couple of minutes before deciding she couldn't do it and took it back. The ribbon was still tied beautifully.

She can’t get out

As the rain patted on the roof, Lisa thought about how long it had been since she had been in her office. She wondered about her co-workers and if any of them had been ill.

Her musings landed on Norman and for just a moment, she smiled. "I wonder how he's doing," she thought.

The rain let up a little and she turned back to her tidy living room, found her remote, and settled down to listen to BBC.

Lisa arrived home from work, and took Lisa out for a quick walk so she could do her business. After Lisa got home, she removed Lisa's leash and gave her a quick pat on the head.

"How about some supper?" she asked Lisa.

"Wuf!" said Lisa, and wagged her tail. Lisa put some dog food in her bowl, then felt her own tummy rumble. She was starving! A quick look in the fridge revealed there wasn't a lot in there. She decided to just go to the grocery store and grab a quick bite. But first she'd take a quick look at the grocery flyer. Oh, dollar days was on this week, yay!

"Grrr." Lisa said to herself as she looked through the flyer for the third time. She'd been looking for a good 20 minutes, and could not decide on anything.

"Maybe I'll get the Chuck Wagon burgers." she thought to herself. But then she'd have to buy hamburger buns. And ketchup, And mustard. She sighed mightily.

Finally she decided on a dinner she could heat up in the microwave, Linguine with broccoli. That would be nice. She went to the grocery store and picked up the dinner. These things were really small, though, and she was starving. Feeling a bit daring, she stopped in the deli and bought a turkey sandwich to go with it.

She arrived home, heated her dinner, brought it in with the sandwich, and turned on the TV. She gave Lisa a little bite of her sandwich, then settled in, turned the TV to the news, then started eating her dinner. "Just perfect." she sighed contentedly.

It was around 4:05 in the afternoon. Lisa had just parked her car at the small coffee shop, and the sun was bright and the weather was cool.

She opened the door and entered. It wasn't too busy--there was a young high-school couple in one corner, a few old folks by the wood-stove (which wasn't on), and a fellow from UPS at the counter. Gene himself was taking the order. She waited behind the UPS fellow, wondering what she'd get.

Soon enough the man left, seeming in a hurry. "Hello!" she said to Gene, who greeted her with a warm smile. Lisa ordered a small iced coffee with a muffin on the side. Within a minute, Gene handed her the items, wished her a nice day, and she decided to sit on the bench outside. After all, it was good weather.

Norman was running low on fizzy water. He went to the store and stopped, aghast. There were two flavours of fizzy water. After a few minutes, a worker named Nora came over and suggested the lemon flavoured fizzy water instead of the lime flavoured. Norman grabbed both bottles and went to go and check out. At home, he threw away one of them. Lisa all of a sudden woke up. Whew. It was only a nightmare

After she got off the city bus, Lisa hummed an off-key tune under her breath as she walked along the sidewalk. Meeting another pedestrian coming toward her, she tried to side-step them but they went the same way. Reversing direction, the other person was able to get by Lisa. Lisa smiled wanly and made a lame joke, "Wanna dance?" The stranger didn't look back.

Kicking herself mentally (but not too hard), Lisa continued along the sidewalk toward home. She shrugged off the encounter and wondered if Lisa had been a good girl today.

Lisa sighed and looked at the box on her desk. She needed to move it to the top of her cabinet, and even though she had tried to do it, she couldn't. Besides, she was concerned because she didn't want to make a lot of noise that would disrupt the peace of the workplace, or even worse, to drop the box and the contents of it.

She looked around and found some of her male coworkers deep in conversation, but her eyes stopped on one in particular, who was alone near the water cooler: Norman.

"Hey, Norman, can you help me with something?"

Norman accepted and went to her.

"I need to move this to the top of my cabinet", she said, indicating the box. Lisa looked attentively at him, while he examined the heavy object.

"I can help with that." He unbottoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. She thought about how his veins marked on his slim arms and he frowned as he gripped the box's handles. She sat on the edge of her desk and watched him.

"Careful, it's a bit heavy", said Lisa.

"I'll lift with my legs", Norman answered confidently. He moved the box with a little bit of effort as Lisa followed his movements, watching him. His eyes met hers.

"Yes?" asked Norman. Lisa became embarassed for having been caught and quickly responded: "Oh! Nothing." She felt herself blushing.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?", he said. He was a really attentive man. Lisa liked that.

"No. That was all I wanted." She smiled at him, and just when she was about to thank him, he leaned his head, turned around and left to his desk.

Lisa looked at the box up on her cabinet and smiled once more. She glanced at her watch. It was time for her to leave. But she thought about trying to talk to Norman tomorrow. He was a very nice man and she really liked him.