tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43470118974983050942024-03-12T16:05:37.286-07:00Shirley, I jest.What the internet really needs is more people who think that anyone gives a shit what they say.jphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060890364833394413noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4347011897498305094.post-57413657092201562982017-09-20T10:03:00.001-07:002017-09-20T10:03:04.438-07:00One Day in the Sun.I just posted two sad posts in a row which means that now it would be time for... [drumroll] Yep, another sad post. Which is totally not what I've ever been about with the blogging but apparently it's the conduit that got me to start writing again this time, so I'm going with it. <br />
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And really, this one isn't sad; I'm just being dramatic. The nephew in the navy is sad. The waitress who probably found a better job? Even that is not really sad, just mildly inconvenient. But this is at least sad enough to change life as I've come to know it over the last 3 months, so that makes it at least somewhat significant on the sadness scale.<br />
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I had to drain the pool last weekend.<br />
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First time ever doing so, given that this was the first summer ever where I actually had a pool. Lordy, I feel entitled just typing that. An actual pool. Like the Beverly Hillbillies, except my pond was not cement, it was inflated rubber or whatever it's made of. It was so nice to have, too. Like every time I'd mow the lawn and be all hot and sweaty and think "Man, I wish I had a pool right now to fall into..." And this time I DID! And I had the floating lounge tube with cup holder to drift upon, and the inflated air mattress to lay on, and the little solar disco light that charged all day and then put on a little dance show for me each night. It was just so splendidly wonderful, like my whole life had led to this.<br />
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Given the prominence this thing took in my life, you'd have thought I'd have made "pool" the number one criteria when house hunting a few years back. But I didn't, because I was trying to be all grown up and reasonable, and this isn't exactly the geography where you're going to get much use out of the thing. But as the house I did buy started coming together, that pool was always there in my mind as the thing that was making it all NOT perfect. As in, this is not my lifelong dream. There is no pool. I cannot possibly be happy here.<br />
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Two confessions.<br />
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It's barely a pool. 3 feet deep, 13 foot circumference. Two body lengths of me. I can float from one end to the other in all of .5 seconds. It could hold two people in a sitting or laying position, maybe 10 if we were all standing up, water to our knees. <br />
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And also, I really didn't get much use out of it. Took about a month for the water temperature to get comfortable, and then a month after that it was in the shade all day and never warmed up at all, no matter how hot it got outside. (August was kind of cloudy/rainy, with lower night time temperatures, not really typical for this climate. And totally the opposite of the "global warming" concept, which I think is why they are calling it "climate change" now.)<br />
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So, July was nice. Never really had anybody over to enjoy it with me, although my sister got some use from it the day after the Queen concert when she spent the night. <br />
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Most annoying of all this summer was not so much the August cooldown but the fact that even though I live alone and kind of like it that way, I was never truly alone in my backyard. Magic Mike next door was there, sitting in his deck chair, smoking his cigarettes, working very very hard on his tan, all day. EVERY DAY. Seems Magic Mike (I call him that because he doesn't wear much, despite the fact that he really, really, SHOULD be wearing more. For the love, just put on a shirt, man.), seems he's not working any more. I don't know the story, I'm not going to ask, I just know he's not working. Or doing anything. He's just there, all fucking day, every fucking day, all fucking summer. Repeated use of the word "fucking" means I'm kind of fucking pissed about it. I don't even think he's 50, so I'd kind of like the story, because if he's figured out how to not work and still survive, I want in on the action. But even if I wasn't working, what I'd have done is spend an hour at the pool, and then fucking find something else to do. Hell, I'm the most addicted chain-smoker I know, and even I take breaks in between them to do real things. It's just weird to me. Weird, frustrating, and totally counter to my other bucket list item of not having tan lines. And now you see the point.<br />
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Anyway, I had a pool. I got to use it for a month. Even when not using it, it was nice to look at. Kind of comforting, almost. Like, even though I'm not going to swim today, maybe tomorrow. That option was always there. And they were talking about a warm fall and late winter, so there was this remote possibility that I would get much more use out of it. But that just never happened.<br />
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As summer wore on it became harder and harder to keep the water clean. Despite not much surface area, the damn bugs had no problem finding that thing. I monitored the chemicals and frequently replaced the filter and skimmed the water daily. Once a week I took this little vacuum-ey thing I bought to suck the dirt off the bottom. But there was always more dirt. I guess I live too close to a busy road, or the air over this city is more polluted than anyone realizes. Point being, lot of work. And by Labor Day, there was nothing, I mean nothing, I could do to make that water blue again.<br />
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I held off on the draining for an extra week, ever the optimist. <i>Just one more pool day</i>, I prayed to the god I don't believe in. She didn't give a shit, probably due to my lack of belief. There was just no point anymore. Even if we have the hottest October in history, that water will not heat up and that blanket of dirt will not go away. So last Saturday I stuck one end of the hose in the water, gave the other end a good suck (yeah, it looked just as ridiculous as it sounds) and then tossed that end over to the corner of the yard that was closest to the street sewer.<br />
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The next morning, I looked out the window. Just the most pathetic sight you ever did see. My once firm and robust kiddie pool now laid limp and flaccid in the middle of the patio, still about an inch of dirty water sitting stagnant inside. It was filthy, it was tired, and it seemed like just yesterday we had been so happy together, me floating on an inflatable mattress in the cozy crystal water, Magic Mike watching from his deck next door and wishing he were as fabulous as me.<br />
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I kind of feel like there's a metaphor for the rest of my life buried in this story somewhere. Or not, who knows. I've always been kind of slow on the uptake.<br />
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<br />jphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060890364833394413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4347011897498305094.post-90112933894770205342017-09-19T16:55:00.000-07:002017-09-20T08:51:22.040-07:00In the Navy.The Village People are hardly appropriate as a title for this post, but there it is. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you summarize the topic you're about to write, and it's always going to be song lyrics with me. Fifteen years of frickin' blogging (give or take a handful of <i>extremely</i> extended sabbaticals) and it's always goddam song titles.<br />
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I'll just put this out there, in the interest of full disclosure. I've been sad. It's been going on for months, but not more than a year. It was, in fact, something that seems to have started the day after the 2016 election. Because that shit seriously shook my world down to it's foundation, and literally everything changed. Some of it overnight, some more of it in January, some of it still, more of it to come. It can never be understated how seriously, seriously fucked up all of that was. IS. All these months later and I still cannot process.<br />
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I'm hardly alone in my suffering, I get that. Anxiety at this level can manifest in physical ways, and I suppose I've been lucky in that regard. (Others in my family have not.) And some people just picked right back up again and continue to live their lives in the same frame of mind as always, sometimes speaking out in opposition and other times tuning out the madness. Possibly for the sake of sanity. But they are doing something. I, mostly am not.<br />
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We don't talk about it in my family. I'm a minority with the voting in that regard. And the religion. And, sigh, most of the things. But we love each other, we do, so we tolerate the differences. And that right there is something I have not been able to do with most in the world, certainly not on Facebook, certainly not in person. But for family, you do. You tolerate. And what a horrible word that is. It's a word that means, through unspoken communication, that they can speak freely on the forbidden topics while I, perhaps, should just maybe shut the fuck up about what I do and don't believe in. Because I am wrong, and that wrongness could harm the children, or even worse, make the grownups start to question all the things they've been taught since birth. You just don't do that to your loved ones. Not if you really love them.<br />
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Again, no one in the family has used any of those words. I just know.<br />
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And hey, guess what? None of that was the point, once again. [Note to self: When you go off topic, edit that shit out, and don't procrastinate it.] Where was I? Oh yeah, ok... The facts are these and the point is this: I've been sad. Sad, but surviving. Sometimes drinking, which then makes me not sad for awhile, at least until the next morning when it becomes a whole new kind of sad. I've stayed in even more than usual, which was already a lot, I've cut back on socialization, and part of that comes from all the friends I lost from my inability to tolerate. (We're talking about racism, bigotry, misogyny, human rights and such, mind you, but yeah, I'm intolerant towards that shit. It's what makes me so bad.)<br />
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So when you are sad, what you don't want is for your firstborn nephew, the one you love the most (just kidding), but certainly the one who was there first and longest, including several years when there were no others to love, THAT one, not only grows all the way up to manhood in the most refined and elegant way possible, but then has the actual freaking nerve to join the goddam U.S. Navy. And during the Trump regime, no less.<br />
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I've known the day was coming, it almost didn't come, and then it almost went another direction, but then it came back to this direction and it become finite and a date was given and I knew the day was coming but I tuned all of that out because that was less painful. But dad texted yesterday to remind me that the day is today, and maybe I should give him a call because it might be awhile before we get to talk again.<br />
<br />
It's been rough since Brother1, his wife, and Nephews1 and 2 all moved to Ohio. We'd always lived within an hour of each other, the entire family including all parents and siblings, nephi and niecelets. You just kind of learn to assume it will always be that way. But life happens, and I get that, and I've done a remarkable job surviving without my two eldest in proximity. We still see each other a couple times a year, and while not ideal it has certainly been sustaining. That last statement might be questionable, but let's go with it.<br />
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I had a lovely talk with him, something we don't do on the phone often enough. I just kind of felt like a boy, er, man of that age with a girlfriend and classmates and a social life what puts mine to shame would not want to look at his caller ID and see the words "Uncle John" at any time of day. Hell, even I wouldn't answer that. Even last night, I knew he was with his family on their last night together and more importantly, last evening with his girlfriend, and I kept it to the point. I told him I was proud, I would not worry because I knew he was smart and always made good choices. And he would always know where to find me.<br />
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I talked to his dad, and sent him and wife and youngest all my virtual love and hugs. I told him to watch out for the girlfriend, because she would need that. Goodgod, whatever I am feeling, they are feeling it SO much worse, to the point where I don't even have the right to feel anything. (And the girlfriend, you just have to meet her, the SWEETEST. See? Smart kid, good choices.) Barely knowing what love is myself, the thought of them at that age realizing they are in love and then instantly separated for what can only be defined as infinity. Oh yeah, there will be a wedding some day. But please not soon, I'm already a babbling mess.<br />
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Lovely. Just lovely to talk with them, to talk with him again, and be able to put that footnote of closure on his entire childhood. From this point on we will speak to each other only as men. Grown, adult, mature men. Well, he will be mature. I will be just be grown. I just don't know when that next conversation may be.<br />
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I put down the phone and sat in my television recliner, alone in my house as I always am. Television off, house quiet, I just sat there. I remembered that time at the pumpkin farm when he was 4 and insisted he was old enough for the haunted house, and his dad was away serving with the national guard in the Iraq war, and my nephew grew terrified halfway through the experience so I buried his face in my shoulder and smuggled him all the way through the haunted house to the exit, where he sobbed in my arms while I told him how brave he was. I got to be his dad that day, and I'll forever be grateful for the moment.<br />
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I thought about this, and then I cried. Well, not audibly, but there were tears, at least. Big wet baby eyes, like a four year old boy. I cannot confirm if the lower lip and chin were doing that involuntary convulsive thing that four years old do when they are almost crying, but for sake of visual let's just say that I was.<br />
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Last time that happened, the last time I allowed myself to succumb to physically to the emotion of sadness like that... well, it was the day after the last election.<br />
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<br />jphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060890364833394413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4347011897498305094.post-63210570995346879822017-09-19T14:57:00.001-07:002017-09-20T08:12:00.800-07:00The Way We Were.The rituals that keep me sane. All of them. It borders on OCD, or ADD, or anal retention, or something else, but it probably isn't any of those things because that would actually lend some legitimacy to my crazy and it would all become justified. Much like chronic back pain, or being left handed, legitimizing it is not allowed. Just suffer and be weird and shut up about it, thank you.<br />
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That entire introductory paragraph was a tangent from the thing I haven't even started writing yet.<br />
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So the real point is this, that I tend to have these rituals all the way down to where I eat lunch, what I order, and sometimes even what days of the week I do each. I've seen it much worse than me, but I still do it. I mix it up sometimes, just to prove that I can. Like maybe toast instead of pancakes, or if I'm really crazy it's the BLT and the waitress will ask if I'm feeling ok because I didn't order breakfast.<br />
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To drink? Always Mr. Pibb in a to-go cup, if they have Mr. Pibb. Kind of makes me feel like a dick for even asking, but I ask anyway, because I really want that takeout sugar for my afternoon in the office. <br />
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My god, none of that was the point. The only point is this: YESTERDAY, at the diner near my office where I go on Mondays, that special kind of tragedy that can only be compared to a death in the family or a breakup with that person who you were convinced you were going to marry one day, the kind of thing that makes everything wrong with the world for an indefinite yet lengthy and painful healing / recovery process, THAT happened. To me. And only me.<br />
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My favorite waitress quit.<br />
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You just don't understand. You can never understand. She was special. What we had was special. She called me "hon" or "sweetie." She sat down in the booth with me while I ordered. And then we talked about our lives.<br />
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"They do that to everyone" says you, the people not reading this. Duh, I know that. But still, we were special.<br />
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Two weeks ago I walked in and she was bent over at the very first table, wiping it down from the previous customer, and there was her ass, shining toward heaven, hell, and everything in between, all at the same time. You couldn't see anything else without going around it. And without her knowing I was there, I said "You just have no idea how tempting it is right now to lift my foot in the air..." And she laughed, and pointed the ass even more in my direction, as if that were possible. "Go for it," she laughed.<br />
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I've known Misty now for all of six months. Six glorious months. She invited me to a barbecue at her house this summer, and to swim in her pool. She probably invited every regular customer at the diner, but whatever. I didn't go, of course, because I kind of figured it was an obligatory "everybody gets one" type of invite, but I was flattered she asked. In August she was gone for a week to get married, and last week I asked her if she was still happily married. "They said it would never last," she grinned. See? I know this stuff about her. I knew personal details about her life, and she knew about mine. And we would ask each other followup questions on subsequent visits and we had inside jokes and ALL OF THE THINGS.<br />
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And really, I'm not doing this story any level of justice. Some people are good at what they do, and she was the best at it. In the year she worked there she quadrupled the attendance. Particularly the lunch crowd, all of them regulars. The food is fine, but they were coming to see her.<br />
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It's that thing when you walk in the door, and there she is holding a Mr. Pibb in a to-go cup and asking me where I'm going to sit today, knowing full well which booth it will be. Because she knows what car I drive and watched me park it. Who does that? It's just THAT THING. You can't put a label on that, and if you can I really don't want to know because to me it is enigmatic. As it should be.<br />
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So Monday she wasn't there, and I just assumed it was maybe a day off despite the fact that she never took days off. I would tolerate waitress-who-was-clearly-not-Misty, I would eat my lunch quicker than usual, and go back to work. I would not ask for the to-go cup because NewWaitress would not understand. Nobody understands.<br />
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And so came that moment when someone other than me had the balls to ask where Misty was. Hey, I was being polite to NewWaitress because she may not have been Misty and may not have known jackshit about me but that was no reason to hurt her feelings. I'm nice like that. But the cook in the kitchen yelled out the window that Misty quit last Thursday. The words still echo.<br />
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Not the first time this has happened to me. Hell, not even the first time it's happened to me in that diner. One time I didn't like the replacement so much that I stopped eating there for a year. Until the day that I did, and that was the day I met Misty. <i> "She quit last Thursday."</i> It's all that was said, because the other customer knew not to ask followup questions in front of NewWaitress either. And I was already having an off day, compounding upon my off year, which may or not compound on my off life, but not good timing. I sat there with my toast (this day did not deserve pancakes) and sipped on my soda from a red plastic cup and I just felt shitty. <i>"We didn't even get to say goodbye,"</i> thought me, wistfully.<br />
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After lunch I took my money to the register. NewWaitress saw me, raised a finger, and took a styrofoam cup to the soda machine. She filled it with Mr. Pibb, put the lid on and gave me a fresh straw.<br />
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"She told you to do that, didn't she?" I asked, pointing to the cook in the kitchen.<br />
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NewWaitress shrugged. "No. I could just tell. Most soda drinkers want to-go cups." <br />
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I shrugged as well. "Good catch." But what I was really thinking? MIND. BLOWN.<br />
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Yeah, maybe I'll eat there again next Monday. Maybe I'll try the pancakes.<br />
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<br />jphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060890364833394413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4347011897498305094.post-11902632556316928172017-09-19T13:38:00.001-07:002017-09-19T14:09:25.006-07:00Because I said so, that's why.I need to write again, maybe just for a moment or two. I don't need anyone to read it, I just need to write. But Blogger is cheaper than paper for that typewriter I don't have anymore, so boom.<br />
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Plus, I can do this at work.<br />
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<br />jphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060890364833394413noreply@blogger.com1