Honestly, I’m just trying to get from now until the reveal without learning the Beaver State’s newest billionaire doesn’t possess a face or name that sounds faguely fagmiliar. If you get my drift.
For those few readers who aren’t my very own parent following along at home, there was a $1.3 billion Powerball winner here in Portland last week. Oregon law does not allow lottery winners to remain anonymous, so we will find out who it is in due course.
I just wanted you to all hear it from me first:
It wasn’t me.
Now I’m just hoping it’s not someone I know. Well, I wouldn’t mind it being a friend. It’s the non-friend people I know that I would have a hard time finding out won the drawing. Because I’m probably not friends with them for a good reason…and I am certain money would only make folks from that gutter of humanity less tolerable.
Sadly, knowing where the ticket was bought places it smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood Bi Guy lived in when we were banging out. Honestly, I’d love it if I could be happy if he’d won. It would be my initial reaction.
Was. It was my initial reaction. When I heard where the winner was bought, my first thought was that Bi Guy could – and likely had often – walk there.
Unfortunately, my second thought was that as a recovering addict, winning that kind of money would probably be a death sentence for him. I would rather think it would fund all the dreams he told me about giving back to the recovery community by helping others get sober. That’s just not what I observed of his action tell me would be likely.
So, in that case, I hope it was a long haul truck driver that was just passing through.
All I know is that I had more friends text me that morning before I checked my numbers than on my last few birthdays combined. That was a fun way to spend the morning…but I’d hate to spend the rest of my life feeling “that way”.
I’ll let you know if the winner is someone I know. If you don’t hear from me, expect one of two things: I didn’t know the winner or a wedding invitation.
Of course, that was on the immediate heels of my statement, “The fuck you are”, so…maybe there’s a smidge of credibility to her incredulity.
Maybe.
Of course, my statement was said as I crossed the threshold of my building’s entry and she announced coming in from the outside – as the callbox was dialing up to whomever she was on her way to visit – “Oh, great! I’ll follow you in!” as is she were doing me a favor. My full statement – sandwiching her shocked assessment of my…couth – was “The fuck you are, since I’m clearly leaving – and you can’t use the elevator unless you’re buzzed in.”
See? Context.
It wasn’t that rude.
Especially when compared to her brazen entitlement at bypassing my building’s security. That’s the truly rude bullshittery.
I heard her muttering “I thought Portlanders were supposed to be nice” loud enough for my benefit, and lamented the energy she wasted trying to offend me. Because, care…I do not.
I used to be nicer about it, but I’m done with that. Let people be offended, the result is going to be the same, them trying to get what they want regardless of what’s right.
Oooh, key word right there.
How are people so blind to their own wants that they simply ignore the reality that their want came with the assumption that rules are for other people?
As is my Saturday morning norm, I woke up and spent the morning reading leisurely in bed while caffeinating. Leisurely might be overselling it, since I do fall quite behind during the week, but I always welcome the opportunity to start my catch up with proChristinating on the actual backlog and starting off with one of Geoff’s latest entries since they are easy on the still sleep-addled brain and also reliably produce a chuckle.
If you clicked that link, you’ll know that today’s post from Geoff – it’s pronounced Ghee Off, presumably because one (or both, who knows?) of his parents was a title holder in his hometown’s Butter Clarifying Championship – really ignited the most used part of my brain: the section that speaks acronym.
Don’t you want to go back and read it now? Like I would steer you wrong. Well, sure…if it was solely for my own amusement, otherwise: never!
Case in point, one of my favorite acronyms regularly puts my co-workers into fits.
E.S.B.
I use it several times a week, sometimes daily.
My appreciation and usage of that acronym comes honestly, from a friend trying to make me feel dumb. Aren’t those just the most cherished memories? Well, I mean, when they fail gloriously. Because there’s nothing so memorable as someone who is not smart trying to make someone else feel dumb.
Geez, this story has to be about 15 years old now, as I was about three ESBs into my happy hour when it occurred and I’ve been off ESBs and exclusively onto IPAs as far as beer goes – for the past decade.
Dumb Ass Friend Talking: You’re always talking about how ESBs are the best beer.
Me: Truth.
DAFT: Do you even know the story behind your beer? Like what the name even means?!?
Me: Sure, it says it right on the label under the big letters, you stupid fuck. Extra Special Bitter, and I 100% am what I drink, so how about you get the next round and try to be a little less of a clown the rest of the night?
Somehow, we’ve lost touch over time. But he was a Shittatle person, so I really don’t care. As if my hostility during the conversation wasn’t evidence enough. In retrospect, I suspect he was trying to tease me about being from Portland – the Seattle/Portland rivalry is real – and riffing on the inaugural Portlandia skit about Portlanders ordering the chicken in a restaurant. This tactic failed for two reasons – three, I just thought of a third:
1) He asked two questions and I only addressed the second. He should have stopped at the one.
B) I hadn’t yet seen the episode he was riffing on. Nor would I until I ended up eating in the restaurant that episode was filmed in and someone brought it up.
3) He was dumb.
Yeah, that was the third thing I thought of. But it’s important! You see, while Portlanders are busy being recognized for being the best at things like food culture, having and retaining an awful NBA franchise, not turning down federal funding for creating a world-class light rail system, and producing world famous bands who fame is not enhanced by its front person’s passing themselves away…Seattle is none of those things and they are compensating their asses off.
That’s not their fault, entirely. Well, not the dwindling Seattle natives, anyway. With such an influx of mostly tech bros from all over the planet comes a lot of insecurity. Because those tech jobs have high pay, which Stupid Americans consider a validation of self. And tech bros need validation. Heck, anyone with a high paying job that is the result of years of focus on a specific subject needs validation because they very likely know very little about other things – like social skills – and no one knows anything about what they do because it takes years of focused study on a single subject in order to know anything about it.
A big salary can make you feel secure, but it doesn’t make you happy.
Yeah…what it isn’t is a recipe for happiness? A big salary and a field of study that isolates you from society’s general pop. All you are is still not happy, but with fewer friends and more money.
That’s Seattle to me in a nut shell.
The obvious Plan B there for my friend was to find happiness through eroding others’ happiness until their misery falls below his own.
And that’s where we were – except, having grown up in Portland, my existence default was set to happy, so this dumbass didn’t stand a chance. Bless his heart.
Ironically, Geoff lives in Seattle and is someone I’d have loved knowing when I was living there – especially because he isn’t one of those Seattle people who embellishes the part of town he lives in – another validation tool Seattle folks love. He doesn’t talk about his “part of town” at all, you see. This sets him apart from the other type who say they live in, say…West Seattle, which is a swanky Seattle suburb. When pressed about where in West Seattle someone lives when it comes up – y’know via enthusiastic statements like “Oh, I love X restaurant! It must be nice to be able to walk there and not deal with parking!” or “Yes! Where there’s actual beach!” – these people crumble and retreat to vague statements like “Well, I live on the South end of West Seattle…”
White Center. You live in White Center, you fuckin’ poseur.
Look what song just came on
This song literally includes the words
No postcode envy…clearly she has encountered these Southwest Seattlites.
Nah, Geoff’s not like that. He lives in Phinney Ridge. He’s never said so, but I’m sure of it. If not, he’s got to be at least Phinney Ridge-adjacent…
But that’s a long way from the acronyms I started off with. Specifically, the consternation my use of E.S.B. produces in my co-workers.
Since most of my regular contacts at work work in HR – don’t let me get started on HR…- declaring I need an E.S.B. at 9:30 AM can raise an eyebrow. And that’s why I respect these HR peeps, they also know the root meaning behind that Extra Special Bitter acronym.
When they suggest maybe I go to a “meeting” instead, I clarify that E.S.B. means Emotional Support Bagel.
At least at 9:30 in the goddamn morning.
Closer to noon, bagel makes way for burrito.
And, sure, burrito is replaced by beer toward the end of the day. I’m not some basic problematic person – my crutches have…depth? Nuances?
So, yeah. That is why it’s 10:30 on Saturday morning and still I’m not caught up on my reading from the past week: acronyms.
Geoff’s post contained several amusing incarnations of the acronym S.C.A.M. and I’m obviously a fan of an acronym having multiple meanings. But the whole thing had this kind of homemade vibe going for it. That reminded me of a workplace memo about Special High Intensity Training that I kept a copy of in my desk drawer for years back when I managed people.
I know, highly inappropriate for the workplace given that acronym.
But I feel like I needed to go find it once I mentioned it in the comments of Geoff’s post. And gourd bless it, the internet did not disappoint!
Since this all happened pre-cell phone and certainly pre-meme, finding it and re-posting it basically qualifies as a public service. Seriously, do you think a Millennial, Gen Y or whatever the current generation is called – is it Zoomers? – know the pleasure that a covertly circulated hard copy of faux memo produced in the workplace? They for sure don’t know what a mimeograph is and some of the documents I found online were clearly from that era of document reproduction.
And I’m a big believer in humor as a sign of both one’s intelligence and overall personality. Plus, we all need some safe inappropriateness in our lives to help in fostering our development as humans. Bonus if it includes self-deprecating humor. Seems like the side effect of Political Correctness was to produce a bunch of people who take themselves too seriously and self-diagnose mental illness to avoid being accountable for being a boor.
So, there you have it. Courtesy of this B.I.G.S.H.I.T…my first post in months.
What? I’ve been busy.
But I like that it’s both a tribute to the good, old days and the things we consider modern conveniences today – while still sticking it to the Stupid Americans who think dumb is a personality trait. If I really wanted to show off, I guess I could put that 40 year old memo through an AI filter and see how far it could take the S.H.I.T. acronym, but I gotta get my day back on track before look up and it’s Monday.
I also rewatched Love, Simon and feel like my perspective has changed since the original post.
But those aren’t the things I’m here to talk about today.
My TV has a pixel that – unlike KGAY – has gone tits up.
The TV as a whole still word admirably. There’s just this one little pixel picking the cheekiest of moments to wink at me to remind me: accept the things you love, despite their flaws. We’re all heading for the proverbial trash heap as it is, how dare we expedite another’s inevitable?
So…I shall endure my inappropriately winky pixel pal that has served me so well. We can crow hop into oblivion together. Me: tolerating that white spot on its otherwise impeccable display; It: accepting I will frequently pay more attention to my phone or outright lose consciousness as it rolls away before me.
But I swear, any rage this fault in my domestic partner induced will not impact the opinions I share under this hashtag. Any ire you sense will be entirely, authentically mine.
When KGAY TV does something, it may be half-assed but trust it’ll never be done by half-measures. Despite my best efforts.
To wit: I spent two full weekends on the couch.
Watching movies.
Psychotically.
In my defense, this was all to avoid watching the Twilight movies, but maybe I should have just taken a walk.
By Sunday on the first weekend, I felt bad about wasting the weekend on the couch, so I watched a pick me up movie: 13 Going on 30. That made me feel better, so I made myself a nice dinner and watched Peppermint while I ate. Disgusted by my accidental Jennifer Garner-palooza, I went to bed before I ended up watching Elektra.
The next weekend, determined to not repeat the sins of the prior weekend, I started out with a nice ride on the Peloton.
…and that’s the end of my accomplishments.
Somehow I ended up on the couch again. Wary of the prior weekend’s psycho binge-ing, I put Notting Hill on the TV while I cooled down and ate breakfast. The rationale was that I’ve seen this movie enough that I can turn it off halfway through without feeling deprived.
Once I finished the movie, I showered and sat down to write.
Nope. TV on again and equally accidentally I ended up watching Runaway Bride. It wasn’t until I caught myself thinking that I should watch the original Gere/Roberts pairing (Pretty Woman) midway through that I realized my mistake was already made: Julia Roberts double-header.
Dejected, I did some chores and then sat down with leftovers for dinner, determined to break the mold. My solution was to watch something more substantial. Not in the headspace for true crime or a documentary, I compromised and settled into the then-newly released Netflix biopic, Nyad.
I remembered Nyad being in the news when I was young. Most notably, her swim of the English Channel. I didn’t remember much about her Cuba swim other than it was an attempt. I remembered her Cuba: redux only inasmuch as it was a success.
Suffice to say, I was in for a deep dive (pun very much intended) on Diana Nyad.
Worst things first: the Nyad ‘do.
Dear sweet Jesus…get this woman a homosexual.
Next scene: Oh, she is a homosexual. Now it’s almost understandable.
We find out early in the show that Nyad and her best friend, Bonnie Stoll (played by Jodie Foster) were briefly lovers before their relationship segued into its lifelong friendship. This was handled in an interesting way, in my opinion. My experience has been the assumption of homosexuals having a close same-sex friend automatically being a relationship is usually a heterosexual presumption.
It’s a trope, don’t yell at me about it.
But here, they handle it as the same assumption, but by another lesbian…that Stoll steers Nyad toward. It’s the potential love interest that makes the assumption. Respectfully, so as not to end up the other woman or in a thruple situation – which is why this movie could never be about gay men. But let’s not get me started on those idiots.
Speaking of Jodie Foster, I was inordinately distracted by the thought, “What is up with her character’s wraparound glasses?!?” They (pictured above) are on in dang near every scene. And just what does that sartorial choice remind me of?
Turns out, though, that this is a very real representation of the actual person.
Stoll, not Bono. However, it turns out the glasses have a real purpose. For both. Bono has glaucoma, which makes his eyes sensitive to light, hence the ever present tinted lenses. Stoll, on the other hand, had been a professional racquetball player and her large specs likely started out as eye protection. I assume they morphed into prescription lenses by the end of her career and then just stuck. It’s not mentioned in the movie and I found nothing to explain it on a cursory search of the web, so I’m just assuming.
Not that I wasn’t enjoying the movie, but this was my mindset – distracted, perhaps desperately trying to feel productive after the past two weekends – as I watched. Which is how we ended up back at Nyad’s haircut. Just like Stoll’s glasses, its horror reminded me of something. Then it hit me:
Fucking Spike from Notting Hill the day before! I love that I got a pic of him in a wetsuit – even though it doesn’t show off the hair as best it could.
Next scene:
Well, I’ll be a motherfucker…the actor that played Spike in Notting Hill played a fairly large part in this movie, too. So much for free will. Guess I was meant to spend the past two weekends in movie rabbit holes. It was preordained…I’m just a victim.
Mental misfires aside, I truly learned a lot about this feat and the person and the team behind the effort. I don’t want to give away too much, but about 45 minutes in, the swim is underway and I didn’t really see how they stretched a ~70 hour endeavor into another ~75 theatrical minutes…and that’s where my learning began.
At the end, I’m not gonna lie: I was crying. Triumph of the human spirit and all.
But the experience of seeing the movie elevated Nyad to a new level for me. Instead of some obscure sports figure, she became an example of determination.
A pioneer. A survivor. An unsung hero.
Good for her.
If you haven’t watched it, maybe do. Because I’m not telling you any more – except they all die at the end.
Oh, alright…they don’t all die at the end! And as I sit here writing this, I have a heightened awareness that I have crossed the mid-point of my 50s. This movie picks up Nyad at her 60th birthday. She comes to it with a determination to finish something she’d left undone in her past.
And that’s maybe my real lesson here. Not the history lesson into something I was only tangentially aware of, no. Rather that things that I didn’t accomplish when I was younger don’t have to stay that way. That’s something for me to chew on as I careen toward the inevitable.
I had a draft I deleted a while back about my reaction to new music. At the time, I was hearing new music and not getting it.
Like, severely not getting it.
It was at the point where if someone recommended something to me, I’d give it a listen and then question their company. That’s how bad my reactions were.
And it wasn’t just acts that were new to me. There was notably a new Sting song during this time and I just couldn’t get there. I’ve been a fan of his since the 80s and have probably seen him perform live more than any other act.
We’re talking dozens of shows.
That’s on top of acts I qualify as only having seen dozens of times. Enjoy that qualifier.
Eventually, it clicked…this new music. I can’t say I really got there entirely, but the impulse to turn off the radio dissipated.
I credit my Drinking Buddy and local radio station with getting me back into the flow of music.
DB got me to a couple shows either in his stead or when a buddy of his dropped out. Seeing old faves bring a new spin to the songs I knew and loved loosened me up a bit. It didn’t hurt that about this same time, KINK was re-opening their live performance lounge and I was getting to see acts that maybe I only knew one song perform.
Eventually, that last situation evolved into seeing people I’d never seen or even heard of. Then my musical stuffiness really receded.
Oh, the joys of actual music performances that I’d forgotten about in exchange for taking what was available to me at the turn of a dial.
It was that re-awakened old Xtopher that encountered the first airing of a new song by The Rolling Stones a few weeks back. My first thought?
Just what was recently called the worst remake in music history. Or was it least necessary?
Either way, I remembered it.
From 38 years ago.
I might have pronounced MTV dead at the end of the video when it aired then. Look who called it.
There I was, though, listening to Angry and liking it. A lot.
A couple weeks later, Hackney Diamonds – the full album – was topping the charts. DJs and music critics all around were gobsmacked and saying things like “Not bad for a bunch of 80-year olds”.
I’d have said octogenarians, but I have a wiser – albeit smaller – audience.
In the middle of all this hullabaloo something unexpected happened.
The Beatles released a new song.
The. Beatles.
Everyone, everywhere: Mick Jagger is 80 and released a new song!
The Beatles: Hold our intentionally warm beer, half our band are dead!
So…that’s my music arc here.
I’ve gone from resisting newness from acts I love to ambivalence to appreciating acts I’ve barely heard of killing it to acts we collectively assumed we’d heard the last of putting out new music…that I love.
What’s even happening now…am I living?
I don’t even care what the answer is as long as I’ve got the reality of loving the music I’m privileged to hear.
Ok, first…the Silver Fox isn’t dead! That said, he’s not yet out of hospital, this being day 15.
“What the fuck” does not convey the level of conflict I have over that length of stay. Mind you, this is also with no immediate end to the stay on the horizon.
My conflict is between relief that he survived an aneurysm and that his doctor said if he wasn’t in such good shape, he wouldn’t have. That last part sounds like praise for good living, but for a man who didn’t want to live past 75 because of his belief that quality of life decreases beyond that point…surviving without thriving seems less like a blessing than a curse.
Not to say he won’t thrive, but it’s hard to see that potential over the current horizon.
It hurts me to see him imprisoned in this limbo and absolutely cripples me to think that a worse outcome two weeks back might have been his unspoken desire.
Hence, the title. I can’t imagine having to let go of my life with him in it. But I also can’t see how he moves on from here. He’s stronger than I am, so I know he will show me how it’s done. Until then, though, I feel like his limbo is absolutely my own.
And since the titular topics are just too for me, I thought I’d share some nonsensical things that I can’t let go of that at some point during my recent move I held in my hand and thought, “I’m absolutely keeping this”.
Because I need that return to my regularly scheduled insanity.
Those cans are all empty. Well, that’s how I remembered them. Turns out the Izzy can was sealed with what felt like 1/3 of a serving, so I did let that go. The two Coke Zero cans were both sealed up empty.
Why in the Willy Wonka Hell can’t I just recycle them?
These assorted beads and ticket stubs. I may die alone in my loft like a shut in, but I guess these mementos prove I left my home at some point. I also tend to keep the Age Verification wristbands longer than I probably ought. Recently I added a couple of patient ID bands to that mix, but I think I finally divested that weird collection during my move. Or it’s in a drawer and I already forgot where I stashed it.
Real toss up, that one.
This festive wine bottle sweater and cap. This is the only bottle it’s ever adorned, so I guess I also can’t let go of that bottle. The bottle started as a reminder of a tasty wine I needed more of but have never found again.
If there’s a reason to get rid of these plastic dinosaurs, I can’t figure it out. Not that that’s a reason to keep them. My stubbornness is at an impasse, so here they are. If anyone even notices them, they never say anything about them. But I know they are there and it makes me happy.
The weirdest thing about these…keepsakes isn’t the lack of prestige these souvenirs carry. No, it’s that I’m kind of a natural purger. I have enough stuff to never be confused with a minimalist, but not so much to ever be mistaken for a hoarder. And all that stuff actually means something. Maybe it’s useful, maybe it somehow reinforces my style or identity. Heck, to that end, maybe it’s just quirky so I keep it around.
But this stuff is all basically – sometimes literally – garbage. And I can’t get rid of it…so I literally packed it and moved it from one home to another.
Clearly I’m mad as a hatter. Maybe more from pickling myself more than mercury poisoning, but still…
That title seem like it has an unnecessary U or two in it to you?
Yeah, well, that’s because I’m currently on stand by to see if my morning will have the inevitable U in it that awaits us all at some point in our lives or not.
The Silver Fox went into surgery at around 530. When I let his ex-wife into his condo for the night – and parked her car in the garage for her, because she’s infamously bad in a crisis and her car doesn’t have a “beep-beep on it” (her words) for backing up – she told me that either the surgeon or the hospitalist had asked “Well, what if you don’t make it?” to which he cavalierly replied, “Call her”.
Ok, A) do try to take this seriously, Foxy; and B) fuck you, I’m supposed to be the one who gets the call.
Well, I expected to be the one, anyway. This is due to the decade-old pact the SF made me pinky swear to so that I’d be the first one into his place and could do a sweep for whatever the modern day equivalent is for “straightening up” before his family arrived.
Heaven forbid his adult kids find out he had a sex life. Or one that was even less of a <ahem> straight line than they realized.
Well, how did my jaded ass not see around this particular corner to his ex-wife spending his potential last night on Earth in his condo?!?
I’m very disappointed in me.
I mean, pessimism is supposed to be my thing, y’know?
Mostly, I think my disappointment in myself is to keep me from being mad at him for not taking his illness more seriously and waiting until today to go to the hospital. Or for coming into town from 90 minutes away to be at the hospital his doc has privileges at instead of going to one closer to his ex-wife’s, where he’s been happily decamped since lockdown in 2020.
Or some other thing that I’m not thinking about now because I’m not being mad at him until I find out he’s ok.
Then that daft bastard is in for some ear music.
Right now, I’m just hoping I don’t have to stage a break-in at his condo tonight to keep my promise to him. While his ex-wife may not be good in a crisis, I suspect she could still kick my ass if I caught her off guard and she felt cornered. She doesn’t have that look, necessarily, it’s just that it’s that type of thinking that has kept me alive this long.
I’m not giving that up now. But I am writing instead of drinking just in case I have to drive her up to the hospital later. But once I get the surgical all-clear, it’s bottoms up.
Welp, I’ve been awake an hour on this fine Saturday morning. Bed just before midnight, wide awake and refreshed at 8 AM.
I am a glass of cold brew into the day, already caught up on email and now I’m writing a blog post about it, so…this is different.
Not sure if it’s the whole frozen pizza I ate last night – I usually eat 2/3 and save the other two slices for lunch the next day – with only two glasses of wine or that I finally returned to the Peloton yesterday after 6 weeks off for my ribs to heal.
It may have been someone something else I did last night that I found <ahem> hard to do with broken ribs, but as nice as that was, I think I’m going with the pizza.
That’s not pessimism or an indictment of anyone’s enthusiasm, by the way. It’s practical thinking. I know I can get frozen pizza anytime I want. That other thing can be tough to – oh, boy – come by. Now I know why they call them tricks. The setup can definitely be tricky to navigate successfully.
Incidentally, my pro tip for zazzing up a frozen pizza isn’t a tip of mine at all…it belongs to actual pros. Of the spice industry. And I swear this isn’t an ad…but would you rather I describe my assignation or my late night dinner in too much detail? That’s what I thought.
All the credit for turning a $7 solution to a hollow hole in your being into a savory insatiable scenario goes to Penzey’s Frozen Pizza Seasoning. Trust me, buy the 1/2 cup jar to start, you’ll definitely go back for the 1 cup bag, but you’ll have the jar with the shaker top to refill!
I actually gave some of this to Bi Guy a year or so ago when we were still banging out because A) he had a functioning metabolism and ate far more frozen pizza than I; and B) was a chef, so I figured he would appreciate the easy level up. Nah, he tried to shred the thought that counted by rattling off what he assumed were the ingredients: Basil, Thyme, parsley.
Parsley?
Please, it’s just a tasteless filler.
Honestly, I’m sure all of those things are in this blend, but it’s not like they’ll tell you. It’s a trade secret. But on top of Bi Guy’s limited list – the product of his inherent laziness that prevented him into even putting any real thought into offending me, there’s oregano and (my favorite) anise seed. That’s on top of the healthy dose of the one ingredient they will disclose: garlic.
Yes, please. And it’s all salt-free. Not that I didn’t need a little salt after my aerobic endeavors yesterday. But I’m sure the pizza itself took care of that.
And in a perfect bookend to my two-glass-of-wine evening, I just poured my second glass of cold brew. On with the productivity!
I feel like I need my own Yoda. Someone who will hear me say weak assed things like “I’m going to try and write more consistently” and remind me
Luckily, I verbally hedge my bets with that approach, so…no broken promises!
As alluded to in the title, I’ve been busy. Work keeps me pretty occupied. My workdays are a frenzied pace from start to finish, leaving me pretty wiped out at the end of them.
I still try – there’s that hedging again! – to get out and do some delivery driving a couple evenings a week. It’s only a couple hours per night, a couple nights a week, but it seems like an eternity when you hate doing it. The reward is getting worse, too, which makes it harder. I finished a two-hour block last night – after the Silver Fox hyped me up when I was ready to pull the plug and bail – and my average rate was $25/hr. That’s down from around $30/hr, which is a hefty percentage.
My parting thought as I bellied up afterward was “Might as well pay me in pesos”. But where two hours’ earnings might not matter, 10 or 12 hours over the course of a month is an extra car payment, so that’s not nothing. Especially as I scramble to make my goal of paying Angela (my car) off by the end of November.
So, I needed the hype. Especially since I wouldn’t have left my home at all yesterday without it.
Nonetheless, it leaves me too burnt out to write much.
I did get a break from the hard work last month when my family met up in Sunriver for our yearly vacation. Sunriver is right outside of Bend, Oregon, so there’s always plenty to do.
Mostly, this time I just ate. Mind you, I swore I was going to spend time writing each day. I’ll save you a scroll through my blog post library: that didn’t happen.
Why would it, in the High Desert outdoor playground that is Bend, Oregon? Well, that’s where the busted up part of this post’s title comes in: I fell down.
Again.
And it was bad.
The best I could piece together was that I slipped on a cat hair tumbleweed as I walked into my apartment. Cat hair + laminate flooring = a suboptimal traction situation.
I’d been down to the local watering hole for a couple beers – two, literally. I just wasn’t feeling it, so I hoofed the 10 or so blocks to Safeway for a six-pack and snack to nosh on at home while I watched a movie before bed.
The movie – or the snackage, for that matter – never happened. As soon as I set foot in my place, it was lights out for Xtopher.
I wish I could say it was something more glamorous or exciting, a mugging, defending a stranger from danger or even a dalliance gone bad…but it was just my natural clumsiness. My friends tried to nudge me toward a more exciting, albeit alternate, truth – the aforementioned mugging, DB even suggested I’d been roofied after hearing my story – but I could not oblige.
I was actually too harsh when I said “natural clumsiness”…knowing physics and geometry, ok, remembering what I do of my high school and college courses on the subjects, what I was doing and how I ended up adds up to cat like reflexes.
You see, if I was walking in the door and slipped on something, my feet would have gone out from under me, leaving my fallen body laying head first into my unit. Certainly the final resting spots of what had been my bag of groceries supports this. Me, on the other hand ended up facing the door, which could have happened – if I had ended up on my back. But I didn’t, I wasn’t just facing the front door, I was also facing the floor.
That’s where those cat like reflexes come in. Not only had I fallen backward instead of forward, I’d also flipped midair to land on my face.
Fairly literally, by the way.
I can’t tell you the exact order – likely due to being mildly concussed by the whole ordeal – but I know I hit my chin hard enough to break my front tooth and open a cut on the bottom of my chin. I remember pushing myself up once after being unconscious long enough for blood to pool around me. That I know because when I did push up, one of my hands went out from under me and I went back down on my face.
I think that’s where I got the four splits across my forehead. Well, not so much across (because that would blend with my age based creases that I do not call wrinkles) as perpendicular to my eyebrows. However, it could have been where I split the cartilage in my ear open. Remembering two falls and having wounds on three planes of my skull further suggests a concussion.
Since I’m a typically stupid guy, though, I didn’t go to the ER for almost 24 hours, so likely is as close to a diagnosis as I could get on that concussion.
Likely concussion, broken tooth and six gashes on my head…and bruised ribs, probably from the initial impact, that’s my damage.
All because I was too bored at the bar to stick around and decided to come home.
At least my ribs were only bruised.
Until the following Sunday, that is. I’d started feeling well enough to venture out of the house and met my parents for breakfast. Afterward I was tired – from getting up early on a Sunday, eating a heavy breakfast and the actual work of walking my injured ass over to the restaurant – so I layed down on the couch to rest. About 30 minutes of blissful dozing later, I sneezed…probably a tickle from cat hair drifting through the air. That’s what I’m going with.
Ah- Pop-Pop-Choo!
That was some pain. I couldn’t take a full breath. Hell, I couldn’t get up off my back!
After another 90 minutes of shallow breathing my way through the absolute WTF worst pain I can remember, I decided I needed to go back to the ER. The pain from getting off my back almost made me forget the pain of the prior hour and a half. It for sure eclipsed it.
Back at the ER, broken.
I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that. They were somehow surprised I hadn’t recalled them telling me how to sneeze until my ribs healed on my earlier visit. Um, hello? Concussion?
I was actually surprised to hear I hadn’t broken my sternum, just a rib on either side of it. I still think I did…while they were being surprised that I’d broken my ribs sneezing, I was being surprised that them hearing my history of micro-fractures hadn’t mitigated their surprise and prompted a referral for a little nuclear medicine to double-check my sternum. Not that it was worth pursuing, anyway…there’s nothing they can do for broken ribs, so why bother?
So that’s how I ended up spending a week in Sunriver and spending most of my time eating versus biking, hiking or paddling around the high desert.
I think I was three weeks post-fall and two weeks post-sneeze when I got back home. I returned from vacation feeling about as healed as I was feeling before the sneeze.
Progress!
That’s just the condition you want to be in when you move homes, right? But sure enough, I stopped on the way home from the high desert to pick up keys to my new place.
While it is just a short distance away, right across the park from my old place…it was a long time coming. I’d started thinking I wanted to move at the end of last year. I started looking with a mind to move at the end of my current lease: the end of March. Knowing where I wanted to be, my current building, made it seem easier to accomplish but ended up taking nearly a year!
It’s silly, living in a world with people who can own a condo and let it sit empty for two years because they thought the damage a prior tenant did to the floors made it un-leasable. One of the other residents is a realtor who knows both the owner of that unit and me and tried to put us together. The guy took my contact info and just…nothing.
Another unit had an active listing and never replied to my inquiry. It’s still empty, but the listing is gone now.
There was a third unit whose owner I spoke with in January. She wanted to list it February 1st but needed to find a property manager first. In two weeks. I didn’t want to move until April 1 to avoid paying double-rent, but offered to rent her place March 1 if I could rent from her – I loathe property managers. She passed. I get her dis-ease being a first time landlord…but I know eight residents, two of whom are Board members. Someone finally moved into the unit on September 1st.
Idiots. Am I not stupid enough to be rich…is that what’s stopping me from wealth?
The last weird obstacle to my move wasn’t really an obstacle at all, so we’ll call her an honorable mention. It’s the Silver Fox’s neighbor – or would be, if she lived in her condo. She doesn’t, though. She lives in the West Hills, where she moved…closer to 10 years ago than five. And her unit has sat empty for every damn one of those years. Assuming she doesn’t have a mortgage, she’s still paying $10000-15000 a year on HOAs and taxes. That’s cumulatively $100,000! I don’t want to live next door to my best friend, so I never pushed it. Not that it would have mattered if I did. I refer to that kind of wealth as “fuck you money” because they do not take instruction from anyone else.
But I made it! Persistence paid off, even though the reward was moving with broken ribs. When I told my landlord I was leaving, it was because of the crazy neighbor quotient in the old building. Crazy neighbors in four of 18 units is too high, even if it only worked out to an average of three crazy people in the building at any given time.
Little did I know that the cause of the broken ribs should have been the reason I moved in April: a broken HVAC. I told my landlord about it in March and he made an unsuccessful bid to have it repaired. I was heating my place with an inverted 4” terracotta pot over my gas stove in March and April. In June, July and August I became an expert at timing the opening and closing of windows each morning and evening to maximize the overnight cooling.
But the lack of air conditioning – or even air movement – has kept poor Myrtle in a constant state of shedding. Hence the cat hair tumbleweeds.
Ironic that the reason I should have moved this past Spring indirectly became the reason I ended up moving with broken ribs.
atleastihaveafrigginglass 