Laundry Day

I am unashamedly terrible at laundry.

This centers on my inability to distinguish between clothing in categories less broad than mine or, not mine. My wardrobe has adapted over the years, in a near Darwenistic fashion to suit this situation and has become durable, pragmatic, and largely unimaginative. There are a few unavoidable variations in pigment and shade but, I find that comparisons such as the relative darkness or lightness of a particular piece of clothing are at best a matter of subjective opinion, and bordering on being obsessively pedantic at worst. I have also never, to my knowledge, owned any apparel that I would need to request a washing machine  be gentle or, heavens forbid delicate with it. I however have surprisingly few problems putting my clothes away, owing largely to me not really giving a shit where they end up.

This has all served quite well for the better part of my, let’s call it adult, life. In the last fifteen years or so it has become a small source of marital stress.By and large this friction usually results in me having a good portion of the morning to stare blankly at the walls and maybe talk to the pets.Today, however is not one of those days.

Today finds me  befuddled by questions. Such as, does anyone really care about the difference between color fast and permanent press settings? Why would anyone would ever want to operate a dryer on “low heat”? And, why doesn’t seem it count as a folding a t-shirt if, at the end of the activity, it is still a t-shirt and there is at least one crease in it.

I’ve ever really had the patience for philosophy on that level.

Happy Monday.

Dwindling Pages

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been keeping a handwritten journal since about mid October. I have been dutifully entering my morning thoughts, story ideas, and poetry drafts into it every day since then. This is the first time in nearly twenty years that I’ve bothered keeping such a book and am faced with a relatively new dilemma. It is running out of pages.

I mean I have another one to go to, provided once again by my amazing friend Catastrophe Jones¹, so that’s not the issue. My problem is, what to do with it once it is full?

Do I just spend my days collecting piles and boxes of spent journals? If I do that, how many years should I spend toting them around? We are talking about several thousand words per journal. Most of which didn’t bear pursuing in the first place. I wonder what the gross weight of my idle, and nonsensical thoughts would come to after a decade or so?

I could burn them ceremonially on my barbecue grill after a specified, or perhaps very unspecified amount of time, in order to signify some sort of emotional something or other like some angst ridden schoolboy². That seems a bit esoteric for my tastes these days, mostly because I gave up being an angst ridden school boy years ago.

I suppose what I could do I take masking tape and label each detailing the dates they span. If I place the labels on the front cover I could set them up along the top of a dresser like one might do with Christmas cards. I could place them in neat little rows like little tombstones. A tiny cemetery where my unused thoughts can take their final rest.

I think all in all it might be important to keep my journals for reference. There might be the nugget if a story buried somewhere in there that, after some reflection and quite a bit of polish, could be brought up to nice finish. Besides,  there’s no telling if my dull and humdrum notes on the day may suddenly morph into a grim survival journal written by conscientious dissenter and serve as a warning for future generations.

In other news I have found my Henry, who has now been repotted and moved from my  wife’s collections of plants out in the front of the house and taken his place as a desk plant. He seems very happy to be in his own pot soaking up the sun streaming through my bedroom window. I think he livens up the place quite nicely and gives the space a touch of class. Also, I realize that I continually use the pronoun “he” in reference to Henry. I suppose it could be short for Henrietta, which is some thing that we might all want to take into consideration.

Let me know what your thoughts on the matter are.

Happy Monday.

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1. Also my most ardent support of me keeping up this little nonsense of mine. ↩
2. We’ve all been there ↩

Just a Brief Word | Happy Monday

I expected to return to this space over a week ago. However, the move that was scheduled for November ended up taking place in January. I could probably spend several posts pissing and moaning about how annoying it has been to be living through the holidays in a half packed state, but I won’t because it is boring. I will say that I did plan to get more writing done than I actually did over my break. Actually I did get quite a bit of writing done, if you count the humdrum of my dutiful entries into my handwritten journal, most of which are also quite boring but there are a few pieces that might be worked into drafts here and there.

I have been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, keep from getting sucked into the internet and visual media since the turn of the year. This is largely because I kept finding myself just staring at Twitter or Facebook mindlessly refreshing the screen, and too many hours wasted on the Tube just looking for nonsense to watch. So I’ve been catching up on a bit of reading actual books, in lieu of internet binging. Most notably I have been enjoying Horoscopes for the Dead, a collection of poetry by Billy Collins. As always I’ve been dabbling with a bit of Pratchett as well. Other than that I’ve been doing a little light reading on the technical aspects of writing, but I really have a low vexation threshold for that. Mostly because I find it tedious, unimaginative and, well I guess Raymond Chandler summed it up best when he said, “The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.”¹

Anyway reading print books is still difficult for me since the soberness, so it is slow going but steadily improving.

Mostly I am writing this to check in so that I don’t neglect my space too long, and to let people who actually read my what have you that I’m still around.Taking a break every now and then is all well and good, and I do have a lot of personal work to get th
rough. Still unpacking and all. I do suppose however, when you find yourself making a second rubber band ball it’s time to start writing again.

That’s all for now.

Happy Monday.

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1. He also said, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Which is a reasonable solution to many aspects of life.² ↩
2. Viva la footnotes! ↩

Happy Humbuggery

I haven’t had much time to write in the past week. My job has been a bit on the demanding side what with the caterings for seasonal parties, and the local university’s graduation ceremonies bringing in a couple of thousand extra people into town. All of whom needed a place to have a good meal, most of whom decided that had to happen between five and seven p.m. on Saturday night. I thought I had bulled through it and managed to sleep in on my first day off in a week, but when I awoke  this morning I was introduced to fresh hell that I could no longer put off participating in holiday preparations with the family.

I am neither religious, nor am I a fan of gross consumerism so pretty much the whole holidays thing is lost on me. I am all about good will towards men, so long we’re speaking inclusively about the entire human race. Provided ,of course, that inclusively they leave me to my own devices and don’t go trying to throw any holiday cheer my way. Especially the carollers. I can’t believe we live in world where gangs of roving merry makers are allowed to go around singing at decent hard-working people. What do I pay taxes for, I ask you?

Anyway, the majority of society has these things called holidays. I also have a nine-year old daughter, and as I recall the path to disillusionment and bitterness in adulthood does indeed start with the childhood wonder at the magic of this particular season. In result I am required to do holiday type things. This morning I took her out so she could get her mother a present. To this end my wife is getting a hot glue gun for christmas.

The evening was spent putting together a rather sad little tree purchased at the discount store. Not a real tree of course. I am fairly sure that this one is made from recycled plastics and disappointment. Then, there was the annual sorting of gew gaws so that the could be hung on the skeletal piece of greenery. Nothing glass mind you, because inevitably the damned cat is going to climb up it and knock everything off, and nothing of any significant weight because It would probably make the poor thing look even more depressing. But, it is up and has been sufficiently admired for the time being, and now my family has gone off into separate rooms in order to avoid any uncomfortable togetherness.

So the point of all this is that for the next few weeks I will be busy doing things I do not in general approve of and then moping about how little I have accomplished for the year, and finally making a great deal of overly ambitious and most likely empty promises to myself about the next.

So I hope you had a Happy Monday, and all have a wonderful whatever it is you’re planning on having.

Let’s pick this up again sometime in early January shall we?

I Don’t Own a Tie | Happy Monday – December 12th, 2016

It occurred to me recently, as I thought about attending my daughter’s holiday chorus performance, that I do not own a tie. It’s not like it was a formal event but it just struck me. When I announced that I intended to rectify this deficit in apparel, my dear wife was gracious enough to point out that I did not in fact own any clothing that wearing  a tie could possibly enhance. I was dismayed by this and skulked on back to my room to consider this.

She, as is usually the case, was right. I don’t own anything resembling actual dress clothing. The last time I needed a suit was our wedding day. Since then my activities included working all the damned time, lying about the house, abandoning my hopes and dreams, and until about four years ago¹ being out drinking in dives till they threw me out². As a result of this my wardrobe has evolved in a more utilitarian direction. When the odd situation comes up where looking like a bum isn’t generally desired getting myself dressed has become a bit of a stretch.

To start with I have to carefully sort through my pants. They are basically all the same make and model of slacks. Black, or at least most of once were when purchased. What I’ll be looking for is the pair with the fewest, and smallest spots where bleach or degreaser has splashed on them. It would also be preferable if all of the belt loops were intact. Speaking of which I don’t seem to own a belt either, the last one seems to have disintegrated with age some months ago.

There is then the matter of a shirt. Now I own what seems to be an endless supply³ of worn and wrinkled t-shirts. They are stored in drawers, baskets and various laundry piles throughout our apartment. The very best of them have little in the way of stains from sweat, olive oil,  or other remnants of grease, grime, and general food service detritus. What marks they do bear can be reasonably hidden by tucking them into pants or the donning of a jacket or overshirt.

Since the goal of this is exercise it to avoid looking like a homeless man, or the Unabomber, the hoodie is out of the running. This leaves one of the two flannel shirts hanging in my closet that survived the latest purging of undesirable, worn out, rags in my possession. Both of them are brown, so the choice there is of little to no consequence.There lies a third and arguably more desirable option. I do in the recess of my collection of attire a black, pinstriped shirt that has through some small miracle never been worn anywhere near my place of employment. This is reserved for truly special events, and I rather think a school concert in the park warrants that designation.

Socks are a blessedly easy affair to manage for me. Due to reasons, I buy them in bulk from the discount stores a few times a year. Even in the unlikely event that all available pairs have a small hole in the heel, then well at least my shoes will cover that up.

Ah yes, the shoes. Once I maintained a pair of exceedingly nice, leather dress shoes. They were black and shiny, and always put me in mind of something a secret agent might wear. I hardly ever needed to wear them. Which was a bit of a relief because their soles had shit for traction and it was hard to feel like a super spy if you felt like you were going to fall on you ass if you ever broke out into anything riskier than a brisk walk. Whatever did become of my shiny black shoes? Lost, no doubt, or left behind in one of my frantic, yet all too necessary, moves from one home or another, or to some intermediate safe locations when I drank all the rent money. So, that now leaves the choice of which pair of old sneakers to don. Will it be the grey and green ones with the soles worn thin and, what I assume to be dried on tomato sauce? Or, perhaps the camouflage print ones with the silver trim, paint stains and whatever the hell that brownish substance is?

I think the tomato sauce clashes less with the paint chipping off the frames of  cheap set of reading glasses I’m planning on wearing.

Honestly I had no idea that things had gotten to such a state with my clothing. I am left wondering how it got this way⁴. Frankly I find it appalling. Clearly one of my priorities for the coming year should be to a complete overhaul of the wardrobe don’t you think?

That and a bit of rabid political involvement on a local scale. But that’s an unrelated matter.

At any rate,

Happy Monday.

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1. Four years, two months, two weeks, and two days at the time this was published. But hey, who’s counting? ↩
2. To clarify I have never been physically ejected from a tavern, but I was often asked very nicely to leave. ↩
3. According to my wife anyway. ↩
4. I despise shopping. ↩

Had/ Has | Happy Monday – December 5th, 2016

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m fine, I just don’t want to do this.”

“I wish I could go with you. I still can,” I tell her, “You know, I can at least just go down there with you.”

“One of us has to pick up Kate.” She replied.

“I know. I’m sorry” I say.

“I’ll be fine.”

This was part of the conversation my wife and I had last week, before she left for her oncology appointment.

My wife had/ has cancer.

We found out about it in June, and she had surgery in July to have the tumor, and half of her large intestine removed. Thing we soon learned about cancer surgery isn’t like other kinds of surgery, it’s not really over with right away.

For instance, I had to have surgery on my knee when I fractured my patella in three places while coming home drunk one evening. I got taken to the ER, had to wait a day, then they operated on my knee. A couple of screws got thrown in there, and four months later I was able to walk around and go back to work. A few aches and pains aside, I was able to just move on with my life.

After cancer surgery, even though they are very sure they got the whole tumor, she still isn’t considered cancer free. Not until after five years have passed without a recurrence. This means that my wife doesn’t really get to move on with her life for five more years. For the next five years it’s a game of Schrodinger’s Tumor; it’s neither there, nor gone until it’s observed, and she has to live in a state of has/ had cancer. These five long years are supposed to involve several trips to the oncology unit for CT scans. Those CT scans are the first line of defense when it comes to detecting if the cancer is really gone or not. They are also priced in a range that I’d classify as unreasonably expensive for someone in my particular income bracket, at least without insurance.

That’s where the ACA becomes important to our lives.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is, quite frankly imperfect. I only enrolled to avoid a penalty imposed by the individual mandate. The policy I can afford, even with subsidies, offers relatively little coverage. It has however one thing going for it.

At least it is something.

I am not going to get into the mire of financial details explaining how expensive everything actually is in my particular case except to say that without that minimal amount of coverage we would not have been able to afford my wife’s surgery, or her post surgical medications. We would not have had the money for her recent CT scan. Going forward, without the ACA we will not be able to get her the rest of the follow up treatments and scans that the medical professionals have deemed as necessary.

Her next scan will be scheduled for sometime next year. After the new administration of the American government is in place. One of the things on the chopping block is the ACA.

2016 is coming to a close, and my insurance policy with it. I am tasked with spending the next few days reviewing coverage options and re-enrolling with healthcare.gov. I have to, not just to avoid a tax penalty this time. I have to enroll in a policy, that I won’t be able to afford without a subsidy, to be able to pay for the CT scans that might detect if my wife’s cancer comes back early enough to save her life again.

And it’s all a giant gamble because I don’t know if that policy will be valid, or affordable if the ACA get’s gutted, or defunded, or replaced. The words, high-risk pool  have been bandied about as well as, voucher system. Those are frightening terms to people who are in the had/ has category.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about.

What’s on your mind?

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday – November 28th, 2016

After several false starts this morning, I found myself alone on a park  bench near my home. I arrived well before any children would be out of school, and just as the current shift of homeless men were finishing up their day drinking. Feeling a bit down I was already on my third lollipop of the day. I watched the men from across the empty playground, as they lumbered out of the park and off towards the nearby shelter for the afternoons feeding. From there, feeling refueled they would be about town mustering the coinage for their evening dosage. Which would most likely be consumed after dinner at The Salvation Army on the other side of downtown.

I recalled the schedule well, thinking about my own wilderness years as a vagrant. Living day-to-day by the good graces, and gullibility of others. For the time being it seemed so much easier than pushing headlong against the very daunting task of recovering my old life; then finally accepting the reality that I would never have it back. Not that life, but eventually a life.

In many ways it was a happy existence. Full of mornings spent loitering in parks like this one, with little on my mind outside a buzz. Every day was a social event, if only because no one could avoid true privacy. My own troupe of vagabonds would sit around various benches and picnic tables of the city. Prerolling our tobacco, talking road side philosophy and pseudo-mysticism. Then spend the late hours chatting up locals, who had much less experience with inebriation than we did, talking them into buying us booze or sharing their drugs. As the bars closed and the marks thinned we’d slink off to whatever semi-safe little bolt holes we had prepared for ourselves.

The problem with being a bum is that it’s migratory work. Trick is to leave town before someone realizes they’ve been taken advantage of, while everyone still remembers the good times they had with you around. It’s either that or dig in and put down roots for the long angles of at least appearing to be a respectable member of society. When my exit window came up I was tired of traveling, and weary of the constant hustle. I began dabbling in the real world menace of holding down an actual job and paying my own way. I began having actual relationships with people again.

Nothing serious at first. A friend or two, people I liked talking to instead of convenient acquaintanceships built on mutual self-interest. A series of mindless jobs that didn’t pay shit, ones to pay some bills but, I could slough off whenever they annoyed me. I girlfriend here or there, nothing romantic, just some occasional intimacy. Building blocks, baby steps. A toe in the pool of society just to test the waters. I’d been burned on this deal before.

It took forever it seems, maybe it really did. I don’t have everything I want, but I do have a lot. A decent job, despite a few things. A great wife. A wonderful daughter. Semi-permanent housing and a few material niceties. If I keep working at it one day I might even become financially stable. All in all things are good, at least better than they used to be. I have my life again, maybe not my old one, but it’s still mine

Yet on my darker days I still think about giving it all up and walking off towards the sunset. Disappear out of everyone’s life again, for the third or fourth time. Can’t really keep track anymore. Just some times it gets to be too much. To be honest I really do miss the adventurous uncertainty of it all. Plus there’s a certain comfort in being no one in particular.

But, I’m too old, and too sober, and I let myself get in too deep. It’s my life, but it’s not just mine anymore.

That’s a good thing, just in case you were wondering.

Anyway that’s what’s on my mind.

Happy Monday.

Moving

Moving, again.

I despise moving.

I have done it far too many time in too few years. In the past I found myself compelled to move by the economic forces that occur when a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, such as mine meets an unexpected financial disaster. Alcoholics do tend to make such poor decisions when it comes to money after all, especially when it is already in such short supply. With this move, however this is not the case.

This time the move seems to be on more amicable, and complex terms. There is no need to hastily make decisions about which facets of my life are important and sweep just those bits into poorly labeled boxes. We aren’t trying to load it all up at the eleventh hour, and hurry away like thieves in the night. We aren’t running to the refuge of a house of a relative or a sympathetic acquaintance. No, on this particular venture I get to enjoy the picking apart of my personal life. Examining the minutiae of my life’s contents as I sort through years of “saved” belongings.

Paperwork is the bulk of it. Notices from my child’s school, unopened bills that are usually paid online anyway, pay stubs from two years ago filed away for those many times I seem need to provide proof of income, bank statements that alternately full of either fanciful lies or depressing accuracies. Then there is fine detritus that tends to fill drawers. Loose batteries of indeterminate lifespan, key long divorced from their locks, broken toys , along with fragmented bits of jewelry, pins and other baubles abandoned long ago all awaiting unceremonious burial come this trash day.

Of course there is my extensive collection of notebooks and pads are strewn throughout the apartment in desks, on shelves and sometimes laying on the floor. All of them half-full of scratch sheets for homework,  grocery lists, abandoned journals and false starts for stories long forgotten, along with random thoughts and quotes that seemed important at the time. I marvel at the sheer acreage of deforestation these all represent.

Inevitably I find myself on my hands and knees picking up piece by piece every paper clip, forgotten Lego, and scrap of paper that has been deemed too large or hazardous for the vacuum to pick up. Stopping occasionally to place a handful of collected pennies into the appropriate jar. The whole experience seems so arduous considering that we’re only carting everything about a thousand feet to the house next door.

As I begin to think about the complicated series of events that caused this particular move it is with much dread that my eyes fall to the couch. That beautifully gaudy, orange, polka dot, swinging seventies style convertible love seat that my wife admired so much in the shop. It was such a wonderful couch up until we had to move it up the rickety wooden stairs to find out that our door frame was just slightly too narrow. We were able to barely squeeze it through only after getting it partially stuck and then removing its stubby, square legs. Now I find myself sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyeing this heavy carrot colored monstrosity like it was a body that I needed to dispose of.

In the old days of booze fueled evictions I’d just abandon it or maybe pitch it off the top landing of the stairs.

I despise moving.

Anyway, that’s been what I’ve been doing this past week.

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday – November 14, 2016

Hell of a week, huh?

Since the election I have seen the blame (if such a term can be applied to an open election), for the outcome of the election, placed on several groups. Various sources in the media and socially have mentioned third-party voters, frivolous protest votes (Mickey Mouse, and Deez Nutz are not viable candidates), African-american voters, white women voters, so on and so on. I would have been inclined to just shrug and nod and go on shaking my head at all the finger-pointing.

Then it happened.

I got into an argument. With a complete stranger. Over the internet. About politics

Which is something I never do. Which is something I should have been doing all along.

In this case I called out a man who claimed that he voted for Trump as president, and did not cast his vote for VP. That his vote was not motivated by hate for the LGBT community and therefore should still be considered an ally of that community. I felt suddenly compelled to call bullshit on that. I am not going into the details, because the other people involved are not here to speak for themselves. But, when I made the decision to buzz in on that thread it was because I realized I had not been doing enough.

I guess what I am saying is that I am willing to shoulder my fair share of the blame, if it really is a matter of blame.

I voted, I voted against the Trump ticket. I voted for Clinton, but I voted in silence.

For years I decided to stay out of the fray. I liked to think “I was above it”.  I had taken an attitude over the years that people need to sort out their own screaming matches. I adopted a facade of general disinterest, “because it’s all going to hell in a bucket anyway.” I cowardly disentangled myself from the broader discussions, believing that I should only talk about those things with people who know me and have context for my thinking. I convinced myself that everything would be fine, so long I threw my ballot into the box marked “Human Decency”. That was a bullshit position to take, because over the years I wound up not jumping in when I encounter people spouting of in a hateful, bigoted manner. I’ve kept scrolling when I see a meme, possibly posted in jest, that spreads false, or misleading information about another class of people.

In short I have consistently failed to step in and stand up for the things that I tell myself I believe in.

I’m not saying that there’s about to be a shitstorm of preachy, political posts coming to this space. I am just saying my friends, family, and society at large deserved better than my apathy, pseudo-nihilism, and smug sense of intellectual superiority.

I need to do better, and I know I’m not the only one.

Anyway that’s what’s been on my mind this past week.

Happy Monday.

 

“That Dad”

I wanted, I really wanted to write something about the election.

I had this thing in my head,  there was snark and humor involved. But that’s not what I do and it’s a little late in the game to start with that nonsense. Besides that, something more important came up.

I missed my daughters first chorus recital.

Because of work.

I became “that dad”.

I didn’t find out about it until after the schedule had been posted. Everyone else had their time off planned for weeks, there was no one available to cover who had my skill set, and I really needed the hours. My wife assured me our daughter had fun, it likely didn’t matter to her that I wasn’t there. It wasn’t even an actual recital,  It was just two songs and, it was done with really quickly. The kids spent more time playing in the park than they did actually singing.

That just makes it worse though. If I had known all that I could have gone into work early set up the kitchen, dipped out, hustled downtown to the thing, and hauled ass back before dinner rush had begun. Not that I could have known but, such is hindsight. Still it bugs me.

I’ve never missed anything before. Nothing like that. Not even the school play where she didn’t have any speaking parts, and basically just stood there dressed as a shrimp. Well, I mean we called it a shrimp, we did our best with what we had, it was mostly just sequins and googly eyes, she really looked more like a super fabulous Deep One. But seriously, for fuck sake I chaperoned a gaggle first graders through a field trip to a nursing home one year so they could sing holiday carols to the residents there. Let me just say, you’ve no idea what hell is until you’ve listened to over one hundred elementary school kids sing “I Have a Little Dreidel” off key, at the top of their lungs, and not nearly in unison to a bunch of confused, and possibly angry, senior citizens.

I suffered this and many other things because I promised myself I’d never be “that dad”.

The one that wasn’t there for things.

I promised I would be there for all the things. The big things, the little things. Even be there for mostly insignificant things that, in the long run, will wind up being forgotten. I have now broken my promise to myself about my daughter so, by proxy I broke a promise to her.

I know I’m probably over thinking it. That it’s not that big of deal. That I had some reasonable excuses. I tell myself that.

Then I remember these words about a father, with a very important job, making a mad run to get home in time to read to his child, because he promised he would do it everyday:

“No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

There will be other things to make time for. There’s a thing in a couple of days, and another in December. Then there will be a whole new year after to not be “that dad”.
Any way, if you live in the United States, go out tomorrow and vote, if you haven’t already. No excuses.

Happy Monday.