It's After 2am on Monday, er, Tuesday

Thank god it's a holiday week, huh? Praise him with great praise. I tried to sleep but I was too cold and couldn't concentrate enough to fall asleep.

Ed (aka "El Jefe") has a one way ticket to Dallas tomorrow and Beth said she "might" be in late afternoon so I's gots nothin' to worry about workwise. Other than waking up in the morning.

I'm f'in tired but I just can't sleep. There's a lot going wrong right now. Things were going ok, even heading in the "right" direction a little while ago but now I'm slippin' slippin' into the same old patterns. Drinking too much. Smoking way too much. Getting fat again. I'm really starting to hate the holidays.

I feel like the happy pills aren't working as well as they were when I first started taking them. That's bumming me out. Really, I can't be expected to talk about things! Dear god.

Ok, that's twice that I've mentioned the big man and I don't mean Clarence Clemons. RIP.

I'm losing it.

OK. I admit it. I've been thinking about my dead father a lot recently and wondering about how I'm going to deal with my mother dying. It's a holiday thing. I always get like this at this time of year. Death. Yeah, I feel guilty about not seeing my mother but I don't know what the point is. I saw her, what?, 2 or was it 3 years ago? and she was so childlike and strange. She was like a "patient" and not like "my mother"... She's not there any more.

And I'm scared to death that I'll end up like her. Though I expect I'll be more like my father. Even though I know I'm a curious blend of the two. A creature made up of the weakest parts of both of them: a senile drunk.

It's that kind of cold, that wet cold, that gets deep into your bones. Because it's 44° (aka 7°) which isn't that cold, but it's that kind of cold.

And it's all about the holidays that I'm feeling blue. It's every year. Thanksgiving used to be my favourite holiday, now I can barely stand the thought of that 5-6 hour drive across the state, into Maryland and Delaware, where the "family" is. The family that isn't what it used to be. I look forward to seeing people in Philly, my real family, whether they know it or not, not the blood relatives or in-laws.

She was... and it's always her, never him, though he was always the "elephant in the room" so to speak... she was so... she persevered. She did what she thought was best. But what she thought was best was always way off the mark. Sadly, I think I respect my father more. I think I understood him more. And I talk about her as if she were already gone. But she is. She's this tiny creature with strangely beady eyes, like an animal. I think she always was. Always living like an animal... How can I say that? Because I observed it.

And my brother, saying "she stayed with him"?!?! Does he even have any idea? Yes, she did stay. But what she went through...

What she put us through...

She didn't know any better.

That's what hurts. SHE DIDN'T KNOW BETTER.

Yet she deserved better.

In Between Days

I swear I am working on 3 or 4 other blog posts, I'm just not making much headway with them. In the meantime, here's a bit of a throwaway.

My toenails came off. Well, part of my toenails on my big toes. It wasn't as dramatic as I thought it would be, it's nothing really. THAT THING on my finger is still there. I was bleeding it for a few days but when I stopped and thought it was all done it still didn't go away. No. Instead it got sore and filled up with blood again. This time I'm leaving it alone. Although I've been thinking of cauterizing it, putting a hot something (paper clip?) on it and trying to destroy it that way. Haven't yet and it seems smaller today so we'll see...

In other gross news there was a pimple on my tummy. I RARELY get pimples anywhere except on my face but recently one appeared on my tummy and it had a head on it so I popped it. One, two weeks later and it's STILL THERE! And it hurts and looks more like a boil now. I mean a "fur uncle." That photo (which I had to remove cos it gets more hits than anything else on this blog) is not of mine but it's eerily similar. I also recently had impetigo on my chin. I won't tell you what I told Allen I thought THAT was from! I am a walking gross factory. I'm blaming it on my imaginary "sugar 'betes."

Thanksgiving's just around the corner and with that comes the usual anxiety about travelling east to see family. It's not the seeing them that causes the anxiety (not my family anyway - Allen's is another story) but the actual travel and sleeping arrangements. Our car is fine for driving around town but I don't trust it much on the highway even though it's never let us down. I would like to get a rental but neither of us has a credit card so that's out. I guess we'll make the trip in the White Knight of Texas again and hope for the best. Also thinking about looking into a hotel/motel room but I can't think of where that would be, North East? Jesus. That's a weird thing to think about (if you're familiar with Cecil County.)

I signed up for a SoundCloud account last night re: "my music career." I haven't put anything up yet because I don't really mix anything, just make playlists so I don't know if it's even appropriate to post such things on there. What I want is one of these things (I would insert an arrow but I can't figure out how to do that on a PC) Look! That picture there! :

Not that I know how to work them or even what they're called, some sort of sampling thing and maybe a mixer of some sort but I don't want to deal in vinyl at all.

I've been "studying" existentialism as of a few days ago and somehow that's related to me going back and looking through old journals to try and decide if I have changed much over the past 15 years. So I pulled out stuff from 1995, 2000 and 2005. Turns out I haven't really changed much with regards to what I write in my "gurnal." A bunch of sad whining about how much of a loner I am and how no one understands me. (Most of the time that's what's in there.) It all began when Allen suggested that Existentialists are just people who never progressed beyond the ennui of teenage-hood. I'm not sure but he may be on to something. I'm trying to prove that Existentialism is more than just stunted emotional/psychological growth which is what I took from his explanation. I was wondering if this lack of change points to a concrete personality or the above mentioned emotional/psychological retardation. I shall keep you abreast of my discoveries.

"Guess what? I'm not a robot."

So I finally downloaded the entire Marina & the Diamonds album, Family Jewels.  I've been listening to a couple songs off this album for months but just now got the whole thing and it's brilliant.  My new favorite thing.

It's 4th of July weekend and I'm hating life.  It's so lonely here.  It's just me and Allen.  Most holidays are like this, especially here, so far away from everyone.  I wish we had friends and/or family to hang out with.  It's soo hot, too, so my plan to get drunk was slowed considerably because it's too hot to drink.

And we keep spending stupid amounts of money on dumb stuff when I want to put it all towards moving but instead I just keep spending it.  We spent $90 on two bags of food at Whole Foods today ($15 on cheese).  We spent about $90 a few days ago on two bags of food at Giant Eagle.  And it's not even stuff you can make a meal out of.  Plus the $225.68 we spent at Ikea yesterday.  I don't deny that we needed four shelves for the absurd amount of DVDs we own and I HAD TO HAVE a salad spinner but that was only $4.  We needed new plates cos the ones we were rockin' were the same one's we've had since we first moved in together in, like, 1997 (or was is 96?).  And we needed another duvet cover that wasn't flannel but was cheap cos Jonesy, bless him, tears up everything and the Sir throws up on the bed every other day.  He's only 10, I can't imagine how needy he's going to be at 14.  Jesus.  It sounds like I'm made out of money.  Guess what?  I'm not.  And there are all those trips we wanted to take.    

I'm busy brainstorming new story ideas for the character that I write about and ideas for blog posts.  Allen's suggested I post a playlist for whoever might read this.  Can't say anyone who reads this would like what I listen to, but who knows.  Trying to think of a new movie-related entry.  I thought I should do another crush list and Allen suggested I do one featuring ladies this time.  I'd tell you my real-time response to this suggestion but you'd think me wicked, I mean offensive.  There's only two ladies on the list so far and I'm not too impressed by either of them.

(Tip: Drinks are more effective if you use a large straw.)

So the above was from Sunday evening.  It's Tuesday morning now and I'm back at work.  The heatwave is on and our poor window unit in the bedroom struggled last night to keep us cool.  Around 8pm it was at least 86 degrees in our living room.  There were some bananas sitting around and it was so hot (how hot was it?) that it smelled like someone was baking banana bread.  That's how hot it was.  I hid in the bedroom and read about 100 pages of this book I picked up from one of the bargain tables at Barnes & Noble:

I LOVE books like this.  I didn't always; I WAS an English major after all.  Then I started writing my own fiction and it turned out to be more like the stuff above so now I try to read more books like this to figure out what works.  

I think I'm going to do a crush post about hot football (soccer) players.  I googled, don't laugh, "football hotties" and found out that quite a few people have already done this.  Not surprised, but I'm not sure I can round up over forty like this person did. We shall soon find out and it sounds like a good way to waste time at work.