I woke up with a sore throat. I don't feel sick, so I am assuming it has to do with the problems I had yesterday morning on the way to work combined with the cold air. I always ride pretty aggressively on the way to work, so I huff and puff quite a bit. It's not that I'm out of shape or anything... I just push myself. The forecast calls for thunderstorms today, so I called Joe to carpool. He was still in bed asleep... which means we'll be late for work. I hate being late for anything. If it's just me, I am always on time or early... just a personality quirk. I have this stack of bills that are usually due about 2 weeks earlier than the printed due date on the invoices. Is this a holiday tactic? I have to work late tonight. It's a completely different feeling when you wake up in the morning knowing that you are going to stay late in the office than when you are running up against the end of the day and realize you have to stay a little longer. Ugh! It's cold here... and I don't just mean the temperature. Why do I have so many keys? Where did all these keys come from? What do they all unlock? I need to move. I'm sick of my house. I like the location and there are some great things about it... like the huge plate glass windows looking into the back yard... or the size of the rooms... but I would do it all differently if I built it. I'm not awake.
Well, the carpets are clean and I'm drunk. How that happened... who knows? Actually, I went to see jean-Paul after I finished the doggie clean-up. I ran into Brad and Jacqueline while at C&H. I stopped by Sherlock's Westheimer to talk to Harry about some lyrics for original work we are putting together. I ended up at a friend's apartment where there was a small group of folks swilling wine. I wasn't much company. I had a lot on my mind... places and people. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. It all seems so right about 99% of the time... then there's that 1% that fucks with me every now and again. I am so looking forward to my bed right now... big, soft, inviting... too bad I have to be up for work tomorrow.
I just got home. It's a wonder I didn't get whacked by a car on the way to the house... it's pretty dark outside now. Éclair is sick. She has been throwing up and has diarrhea... poor baby. If she's not better by morning, I'm taking her to the vet. She's drinking, so that's a good sign. My house is a wreck now. I guess I'll be steam cleaning the carpets tonight. Yay for me.
I have to get out of the office. I declare this work day officially over.
Quick side note: I completely forgot to mention my trip to the
Mars "going out of business blowout sale" the other day. They paid people to stand at the intersections around my neighborhood and hold up these 40%-70% off signs advertising the store closure inventory liquidation. I thought "hey! maybe Santa will bring me that new PA system this year after all!" and zipped right on over. I saw tumbleweeds, speakers with the cones kicked in, bare walls all around (except for some violins that no one wanted hanging in sorrow), and scaffolding. I heard crickets chirping. Fuck. The moral to the story:
Ya snooze, ya lose.
I went to sign up for Secret Santa at lunch. I know there are variations of this program from place to place... mostly it's some kind of office participation thing. I'm not into that... but this one is Secret Santa for underprivileged kids. You basically can give anonymous gifts to kids that may not normally get a gift at Christmas. I am definitely into that. I've been following where and when the sponsor registration was supposed to take place. I went there at the designated time. No one was there! WTF? I'll try again tomorrow, but that just sucks.
I opened my eyes this morning to a little black nose and warm puffs of air blowing on my face. Éclair's body is the perfect size such that when she sits next to my bed, her chin rests upon the edge of my bed without her having to scrunch down or stretch up at all. She didn't make a sound and even though my face was right there at the edge, she resisted the urge to lick my face to disturb me. She just watched daddy sleep... patiently waiting for me to get up and let her go outside to pee. As soon as she realized I was awake, Penny jumped off the bed and ran into the master bath... crying the entire way. She sits by the sink and meows until I come and turn the faucet on so she can drink from the running water. It's like a morning routine... sorta. I had a hard time waking up this morning. I read myself to sleep last night, so I'm unsure of the exact hour I departed consciousness, but it was late... I think... anyhoo, I was sluggish and still hurting from my bike wreck two days before. It took an inordinate amount of time to pack my backpack this morning. It was like my mind was somewhere else. I even left my belt on the chair in my room... which means I have to go to Foleys this morning and buy a new belt because I can not stand it when people wear a shirt tucked in without a belt... especially me. I just can't make it through the day... because normally, that would never happen. My ride in was cold and windy. I usually ride in shorts and a tank top style shirt... something loose. Today it was sweats. I chuckled to (and at) myself along the way because I see other riders in color coordinated, branded, and fancy bicycling apparel... they look spiffy... they look the part. I dress for functionality and comfort when it comes to exercise/outdoors activity... just call me hobo banquet. I certainly didn't look fuck all the trend today. Recently I have stopped filling my commute with MP3's in favor of the ambient. I think a lot more when I'm not considering the music. The air was thick with pollution this morning. I felt sick twice along the way from fumes and smog being deeply inhaled as I slowly progressed on the urban assault that is my ride to work. Today, I'm looking for a sign. Anything... something... I want some sign that today is today for a reason.
When I was younger and wandering in adolescence without direction, I used to dislike Sundays. It was nothing so complex as aversion to religious undertones of the day or the dread of impending school the next morning. It was indescribable. It was a feeling I got that the fluidity of time changed on Sunday... the viscosity of my day was less like lukewarm water and more like jack frost molasses. It wasn't that the day took longer to begin or end... or that the part between those goal posts was any longer as a whole. It was that each evolution and interaction of the day was like a John Woo action sequence. I thought I was chemically unbalanced. My mind was at whirring at 78 rpm and the world around me was spinning 45's. The most disturbing part of it all was that I only got this feeling on Sundays. I can't remember at what point in my life this changed any more than I can remember what point in my life I started noticing if men and women were wearing wedding bands. I guess that is just happens one day like when you start liking vegetables that you didn't like as a child. Who can pinpoint the intricacies of our universe with timeline dates and figures? Today was as close to that old school feeling from my youth as I have been since I can remember. Post Camron departure, the house was quiet and the soft light from an overcast sky lit my den in a most unusual way. It was like that moment of passage during the gloaming when you know everything is in transition, but you can't actually see anything changing. I curled up on the couch with my two cats and book (which I am thoroughly enjoying). That feeling was there, but just out of reach... like I could sense it's presence, but it didn't want to join me on the couch, so it taunted me from the floor. It opened up a lot of childhood memories for me... from that time... kinda like when you are out somewhere and you hear a song that sparks a time in your life when had heard it before and suddenly all those emotions come flooding back... or when you smell a familiar scent and it reminds you of someone or something that you had not thought about in years. That Sunday feeling took me back to my adolescence and I lingered in those memories all afternoon as I slowly devoured the text one page at a time. That weird thing with clock happened all day again too. I go through these stages where for months at a time, every time I casually glance at a digital clock, all the numbers will be the same (ala 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, etc.)... odd. If nothing else has come out of this four day weekend (other than seeing my sister again... which was great), I have spent a lot of time soul searching. I have poured over where I am in life and where I'm going a thousand times. Truth be told, I am amazingly more successful than I would have ever hoped to be at this age given the hardships of the last decade... at least from a stability and career standpoint. When it comes to intangibles like love and character, I believe myself to be a personal success who has circumstantially had failure forced upon him. Maybe I just tell myself that so I don't feel bad about being single. There's nothing wrong with that. I have been successful at procrastinating all weekend... dodging the to-do list I prepared for myself on Wednesday afternoon. I find myself daydreaming and losing myself in tiny distractions. Maybe I'm not ready. I feel myself starting to ramble along the downward spiral to incoherent babble. It could mean many things... it may mean I'm confused about something and am talking my way to a reasonable clarity... it may mean I'm trying to find new and creative ways to procrastinate that very same to-do list into a to-didn't list... it may mean I need my head examined... etc. etc. etc. <-- three times. At any rate, today was a solemn and relaxing day... but I find myself feeling a little empty right now. I feel like I drank from my cup and there's nothing there to refill it. I need a refill dammit.
Camron and I had a nice breakfast at Le Peep. I can't believe she's been here four days and is leaving already! Where has this extended weekend gone?
fermented grapes + clayton + more fermented grapes = broken glass and Cannes, France all over my living room
I have these little clear blown glass looking apothecary bottles of earth from places I've traveled on a shelf in my living room. I have little bits of sand, dirt, and stone from various cities in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Israel, Greece, Canada, various US destinations, various spots in the Middle East, Mexico, etc... blah, blah, blah... you get the picture... sentimental sand and dirt in bottles from places I have been, breathed the air, met the people, ate the food, experienced the culture... places that I want to remember and hold close to me so that I might not ever forget them. I took some earth to remind me. The tiny bottle holding Cannes, France is now resting peacefully (and also peace-fully) in my vacuum cleaner. Note to self: schedule vacation to the south of France next year to replace Cannes sand. Sean called me tonight and we had a great conversation. He's my brother from a different mother... and I love him dearly. Honestly, I don't think the tiny bottles would have been disturbed if I hadn't been messing with the phone cord during my convo with Sean (translation: if I hadn't been drinking so much yummy wine, I wouldn't have been so fascinated with the phone cord during my conversation with Sean, thus leading to my playing with it and causing said bottles to leap from their otherwise safe resting place). Do you think everything in life happens for a reason? or are we all victims of complete randomness resulting from the ever evolving entropy of our expanding, chaotic universe? more wine? Yippie!