Good evening ya’ll. Just hanging out. Just finished a bunch of work. Just sitting under a blanket on the couch and being like ho no bitches ain’t look at my blog yesterday. Tomorrow I am off and I’m going to breakfast with my in-laws. Then some more work for this old guy. I did a bunch today, yesterday, and the day before, trying to catch up and pay off the time debt. On all those days, plus the days that my good friend was here, I haven’t written any fiction. I wrote four or five thousand words on the day before all that shit went down, but I am past due. I don’t know I might be able to get it in today. I went to the gym again today, first time since last Saturday, but the third or fourth time in two weeks, so I’ll be in it soon enough. I went hard. I am starting to get tired of listening to Marc Maron. Nothing he did, just cycles you know. I listened to the Allie Brosh episode. I was so excited to see that she was on there because I love Hyperbole and a Half. I am glad she is doing well, even though she has had a lot of fucked up things happen to her and she is clinically depressed. By doing well I guess I mean still living. That is really the only thing to do at the end of the day, anyway, like The Preacher in Ecclesiastes said. You can figure it all out but in the end you’re going to die like a common fool. So eat, drink, and be merry all the days of your life. Still ain’t drinking. I ordered a beer at a place and got through half of it. I hated to do it but I didn’t want to finish it so I left it. Now my wife only finished half of her beer at home and I fought the urge to just chug it because I actually don’t even want it. I been drinking like three times as much coffee though. I was listening to Marc and Allie talk about letting one thing slip and then not being able to stomach their to-do list any more. Reminds me of whenever the phone rings I ignore it and then dread returning the call for two weeks and then finally do it and it’s fine but I just wasted two weeks. So I said well, I used to know this girl who was like that, and I said fuck it I’m not going to do that shit any more, I’m going to pay off the time debt to work. I’m going to catch up on that old man’s work and I’m going to call my parents and do all the things like a mother fucking adult. But not too hard, because that’s the key to me I think, just try a little bit over a long period of time. Fuck it. I’m living the fucking dream out here for real now. I was running today at the gym and I thought, this is it man, this is what I’m going to remember, some fucked up day. I keep trying to pay down these bills but when they’re all paid down if I haven’t enjoyed my life I won’t feel any different after that. Or maybe I will, because I make a good amount of money that I just throw down the debt drain every month so…who knows. But anyway. My good friend and I watched some fucked up movies while he was here – The Hustler, Dr. Strangelove, and Chinatown. Don’t watch those three back to back! Hoo wee. I ain’t been reading as much. I been listening to WTF non stop. Time to chill the fuck out. Cut the throttle back. Suck my own dick for a change. It’s hard to write here now, but then I try to write something helpful and it’s even harder. This is year three of the blog and the last two years I went hard on it for two months out of each year. Well I’ll try to at least get three out of it. Damn I am sore. Who wee but no for real though I actually am just about the happiest I ever been in my adult life…because when I was a kid though, that was happiness. Like a real little kid though. Too little to remember. Butter and bread I’m hardly dead time to move on and listen to a Jimmy McMillan track. I been listening to The Bends now. It’s good, too. And this Drake song 0 to 100. I cannot wake up early to save a mother fucker’s life. I went to the Spring Street Starbucks today. That shit was nuts. I say “that shit was nuts” a lot now. I never used to say nuts so…I wish I still didn’t. Wearing slippers and gray sweats every single night. Glasses all fucked up. Soon as I get some cash I’m getting some new ones. Waste of $230. Money’s still a thing but only for a little while. Well anyway I am going to try to write some fiction before my wife finishes her school work…oh damn…she literally just finished as I finished that sentence. Tomorrow I’ll get it in. And next week is light. Maybe I will come through with some kind of hot post for ya’ll. Yeah it will be so hot your computer will start sweating like a Long Island Ice Tea in a 24-hour Tijuana dive bar.
Tag Archives: Things I Do/Did
In Case You Were Wondering
Tomorrow I am leaving for the Hudson Valley and Vermont. Today I got my suitcase from my storage space in East New York and brought it back and stuffed it full of heavy clothes. I did some other stuff, too.
Just Get It Over With, Christ
Well it’s not going so bad, today. I think the key was taking a shower. I took like an hour long shower and shave and got dressed in actual clothes and suddenly I didn’t feel like I was fucking everything up. So simple.
On the other hand it’s dark now. It’s almost six. And now I am starting to feel like I should be drinking, fuck it, I earned it, at the same time I am thinking I didn’t do shit.
The cold facts are that I took a shower, shaved, folded laundry, called that old dude, deleted a hundred and fifty emails from my inbox (down to 800 now), read twenty pages of Les Miserables, checked my blog stats thirty times, listened to Marc Maron interviewing Ian Edwards for 90 minutes, listened to some news stories, washed the dishes, and completed the first exercise in John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction.
Well, I think that is pretty good for the first of two days off, the one where I’m not supposed to do anything, but I’m sure it’s not enough to fend off the crushing weight of responsibility that 9 o’clock will bring. I’m trying to view this shit objectively.
Well it’s going better than I thought it would. But then again, I make that pretty easy. Ha! That’s pretty much my strategy. I’m pretty sure when I die I’m going to be relieved. “I knew this was going to happen. Son of a bitch! Oh well.”
Some Things
Yesterday I went to church with GF’s parents. They are catholics. Then we went to lunch at Bon Chon Chicken. I ate a lot of chicken but exercised admirable restraint. Then we came home and went out with our neighbors upstairs to get some plants for the herb/vegetable garden we are going to grow in the back yard. Then we came home and dug up the plot and turned it all over and got rid of all the green stuff that was in there. It was hard work. Then we went and got some beer and cheese and ate and listened to Ella Fitzgerald and talked about all kinds of interesting things.
Today I started reading Walden, which I’ve had lying around for over a year but never actually started.
I’d rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
That’s not an exact quote I don’t think, but that made me laugh. Words can be funny sometimes just when they surprise you. The word pumpkin is just inherently funny. And then someone sitting on a pumpkin is funny, too, I don’t know why, it’s got some kind of fairy tale connections. You can just picture Thoreau sitting on a pumpkin with his arms crossed, or that’s what I did, while there’s a party going on all on top of a velvet cushion.
This post on Rara’s blog reminded me of Hyperbole and a Half and how those drawings really make me laugh. The stories are so funny but the pictures are even funnier. I told GF about the one about depression which I thought was hilarious, but she just thought it was sad because depression is sad. I can’t stop laughing every time I see that shit. “Is this what you wanted to be when you grew up? A sad person holding a fork?” Ha! And “Hey is that a chair? Go fuck yourself!” Ah well it’s just not as funny when you just write what she is saying in the pictures. Those drawings are priceless.
Lockdown
The other day I had to stay inside because of the lockdown and that was pretty boring. It’s weird for me to say that because that’s usually all I want to do. It was great at first because my legs were sore and I definitely didn’t want to go to work with all that wind blowing, and I just sat down and wrote a lot and then watched a lot of TV. It seemed great but also not great. And then when I stood up it really sucked. I don’t know when I’ll learn that that is not really my ideal day. Just sitting all day. I don’t know, it sounds great and is great but then at the end I feel bad and unhealthy and whatnot.
Once again I don’t know what I got on here to write about. Going through some kind of creative slump. Too much sitting I guess.
Oh My Legs
Ah shit it hurts like the dickens. God damn it hurts like a mother fucker.
I decided it wasn’t what I thought. What I thought was that I never give myself time to sit around and do nothing and just be and do something that I like doing and relax and so on. It’s the opposite. I have too much of that and I just get morose and shit, and I should just fucking do my shit. Just do some stuff. I decided that a few days ago. Now I’m tired as shit. I feel like a hobo on a one way train to Harnatha.
It was a bad idea what I did yesterday, which was eat at four, work like a mother fucker, get home at 2 and then leave to bike to work not eat anything until today at 10 AM. Biking to work was a real bitch like that. I felt like I was going to die. I got to eat. I ordered some protein powder type stuff so hopefully I can just drink that the whole time I’m at work since I obviously don’t get lunch breaks and such.
Ah shit. But I’ve been trying to get away from writing, too, and blogging in particular. I don’t know I guess I started to feel like I was addicted. I’m scared of addiction I guess.
I’m not sure if my latest idea to just do more work is good or bad. The first day was awesome, but the second day was just ok. Today I didn’t have time to do anything because I just worked all day and now I’m home and GF is away at a culinary party so of course I’m just sitting around eating bad food and not doing anything that I should or don’t want to because fuck it I rarely come home before twelve and usually just have to go straight to sleep.
Don’t know what else to say right now, though I thought I was just going to write and write and write. I guess I should just stop thinking about that and just write whatever dumb shit comes to mind. I guess I’ll do that next time.
The First Twenty Minutes
Sometimes I wake up with a plan or an idea of what I want to do with the first twenty minutes of my day and it’s usually writing and somehow that shit always goes awry. Like today I got on the computer and my email says that it can’t connect with my server or something because the password’s wrong so I figure somebody has hacked into my account so I spend fifteen minutes fixing that and then I can’t remember if it’s my mom’s birthday so I have to ask my dad (terrible I know but I was pretty sure it was and it was so close enough) and then I finally start to write something and then GF is yelling at me “Can you hear me!” no I can’t! What are you saying! Then I have to go over there and then I miss the whole song I put on to play while I was writing because I was just going to write while she was in the shower but that’s over now.
Oh well. Fuck it.
Hold On
I’m out already. Back in the comfort of the office. All is dark now and the light is on and it smells good and now I really am drinking whiskey and ginger ale, but the heat is still off. No sign of the AirBnB guest, except that the back door was unlocked and the extra set of keys were on the table. So far as I can tell he is fast asleep in his quarters.
Just before I left for work I watched the Alabama Shakes on YouTube. I’d never actually seen a video of theirs even though I listen to their album all the time. This video is a little different than the album version and it almost made me cry. And it got me through the day. That’s what art is all about!
GF is out with her friends, celebrating killing her first lobster at school. I am supposed to pick her up in a Zipcar when she’s done. I offered because one in five woman in the United States will be a victim of a crime and I want to keep her out of that. Don’t like her traveling home alone at night. She does it sometimes and it’s fine, but I’d rather her not if I can help it.
Supposed to be a busy day tomorrow. I’m working a double. But I’ll be home again at a decent hour. So strange, three days in a row. I kept thinking all day that today was Thursday. I was so sure of it. But anyway, strange, because I usually close tonight, tomorrow, the next night and the next, but I’m not even working Saturday, going home for Easter. Coworker left me two dollars from yesterday’s cash take. Weak.
At the wine tasting, no one gave the salesperson who was showing us the wine any respect. It was so weird. One guy was yawning and saying the wine was bad and another was interrupting her all the time saying she didn’t think that was right. It was so weird. One coworker said that they were probably acting this way because the wines were inexpensive, and last week were tasting Burgundy Grand Crus, so they were probably like yeah whatever. Well, shit, that’s pretty fucked up to disrespect someone just because of that. I mean shit our manager is the one who told her which wines to show.
But fuck it. Everyone is mean sometimes, sometimes you just got to Hold On.
Feeling Sorry for Myself
I’m in a weird place now. I didn’t want to start writing a post because I knew that when I did, time would start passing faster, and it’s almost time for me to leave for work. The new AirBnB guest is supposed to be here about the same time I have to leave for work, too. So I’m not really looking forward to either one of those activities, as usual, even though I don’t know what I’m doing that’s any better than that.
Last night I thought sure I was going to wake up and write something. I got everything in order and sat down to the computer at 10:30. By the time it was 11:30 I had opened up my word processor and I was ready to go. By 12:30 I had written two terrible paragraphs about nothing. So I got up and ate.
I’ve said before that the only times I feel good at home sometimes is when I’m eating something. More instant gratification. I did study for the LSAT for 30 minutes and that felt fine. Didn’t want to do it at first but it became fun by the end. Then I read some of Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now! It’s interesting and I had to stop reading it because I knew time was really going to fly if I got too into it.
And it’s cold as a bitch in this whole house again. I figured I hadn’t turned on the heat up to whatever point it was, so no reason to do it now, with only so much time to go. So now I’m sitting at the desk with my jacket and my shoes and my hat on all ready to walk right out the door. I’ve been like this since more than an hour before I actually have to leave. I don’t know why. I guess I’m scared that I’ll get caught up in something and then won’t have time to get ready to leave or something. I’ll really be screwed if that dude shows up early.
Maybe I’m trying to force myself to write too much and I’m not really having much fun with it. So many things I have to do, or think I have to do, I don’t give myself any time to just not do anything, I guess. I don’t know. Same shit all the time. Maybe I’ll try to memorize some poetry while I’m at work or something. I don’t know. Count to ten in French a bunch. That should be helpful.
There where it is we don’t need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
This morning it was bright outside. I had to take my jacket off as we walked to the train in the sun. The birds were chirping as I sat down to my computer in my house made gray by the curtains and the upholstery. And now I’ve moved to the office, with windows all around, and it’s gray outside now, too. And my feet are cold inside my shoes, still soaked with last night’s sweat.
I guess I’ll never talk to my best friend who went off to the Army again. We aren’t the kind of people who can be friends into true adulthood. My great Aunt died and my dad texted me: “Don’t know if you heard but Aunt Annie passed away. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend!” Weird. Last night I had a dream that I was drunk at my parents house and I wrote some kind of journal thing and saved it on a 3.5 inch floppy disk and my mom found it the next morning and was really upset as I helped her unload the groceries from her car. And I had stolen her bag of Domino sugar and cocaine had something to do with that.
Tomorrow I am working a double so that my coworker will cover my shift on Saturday so I can take a bus to Long Island and meet my mother there, and then she’ll drive us back to Delaware. I’ll be there until Tuesday.
I’ve been wanting to get drunk all day, or at least just have one whiskey and ginger, but I keep putting it off for good reasons, just like the heat. We are having wine class before work today, so maybe I can get enough, but no I already know how that story goes. And yesterday I drank a lot of coffee but it was either too much or not enough because it was not making me feel good. I wish I had a flask but I know I’ll never do that. I’m sure they would notice I was drunk by how happy I would be.
We are set to make 500 dollars from AirBnB for the month of May. So far no one has noticed anything and we’ve had four or five sets of guests come. We have a pretty full April, too. I guess we’ve made about 350 dollars including this guy coming today for March. So that’s good. We are going to need a lot of money for our Eurotrip. GF keeps thinking we should stay for longer. I don’t know, shit, people do it but they are rich or have no debts I don’t know. Damn sure can’t throw it all on the 3,000 dollar credit card I have with an interest rate of 22 percent and already 2,000 dollars used up on that bitch!
I guess I’m about the laziest person I know, in a way. I don’t know how to live without instant gratification all the time. I don’t know how to live with a bad feeling in my heart. I don’t know how to struggle through a day gracefully. I don’t know how everyone shows up to work and acts like they do.
For a while there, it seemed like I had some perspective. I was reading the news and history and seeing myself as part of a bigger picture, instead of just self-analyzing and obsessing with myself and all that. How can I get that back? Guess I should read the news and history again.
Ah well. There goes a half an hour. Better spent than the three hours before it anyway.
Snow Blogs
I should have just named this blog “Meditations on Snow” or some shit for all the snowing it’s doing outside and all the trouble it’s causing. Not really causing a lot of trouble, after all, but that shit is getting realllllll annoying.
It snowed again last night and now everything is covered and unlike last time it’s still cold today, really cold, so the snow has frozen to hard white on the sidewalks, grittier and less slippery than ice, but still hazardous. And who knows when it’s going to heat up again, so this shit will be with us a while, not like last time. Which was only a few days ago, after all.
My friend from DC came and went over the weekend. We got drunk on margaritas and car bombs and let the ice melt in glasses half full of Jameson. We talked and walked and did not write.
The bike has been giving me a lot of trouble, with it finally blowing up in my face, literally, on Friday. So the bus has been giving me even more problems.
I’m washing towels now, and we have some more people staying here from Airbnb.
I’m listening to a lot of podcasts and reading The Economist. I bought a little notebook in Brooklyn and I’ve been writing in it more factually. I haven’t written ecstatically or fluidly in a long time. Or at least a week and a half. The weeks seem long lately. And short, too. It’s almost payday again. I’m going home for Easter. So that will mean even less writing with all those people to talk to.
No sign of the scrapers today. Maybe they are dead.
Anyone's Ghost 