LOS TOCADOS SORDIDOS

This just in: bathrooms get dirty and they need to be cleaned more than once every blue moon.

My God! I need to wear my glasses more often! Anyway, that's all I've got.

Carry on.

MEMORY

Reading Stephen King's latest book, Duma Key, got me to thinking about memory. In the book [I'm only about sixty pages in] the protagonist is severely injured in a construction site accident--a forty-story crane failed to go beep-beep-beep when it backed up and it turned his pickup truck into a crumpled beer can--and, during the rough days of early recovery he finds that he cannot remember as well as he used to and that sometimes the words just don't come together the way they should. Calling his soon-to-be ex-wife a birch instead of a bitch and failing to remember zipper, calling it instead a zoomer and/or a zapper, are a couple of examples.

It made me think about memory. I think that mine sucks. I can't remember shit. Childhood is all a blur, for example and each day seems to slide seamlessly into the next, leaving the path that I took to arrive at the Present cloudy chickenscratch. My sister says that she, too, remembers little. Why is this? Don't most people remember their childhoods?

My friend read me the riot act today because I failed to find the poker book that he lent me. When he asked for it at bowling, I told him that I had not been able to find it, had I perhaps given it to him last time I saw him? He fucking exploded. "I knew I shouldn't have gave you that book to read!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide. "Wouldn't you remember if you gave it to me? Why are you always in a haze?! I knew that you'd lose it or ruin it." I felt that he was talking to me like a fricking three-year-old and I'd been having a bit of a bad day, so I exploded in kind. "I just misplaced it!" I said. "I was just wondering if maybe I had given it to you already. Jesus!" He went on to say that I was acting like a crybaby and that I had the penchant for getting pissed off at the drop of a hat [while, he, seriously, is one of the most volatile people I have ever met and he'll explode over absolutely inconsequential things] and blah blah blah and whoop whoop whoop. Bowling sucked tonight. I could not have cared less about how I bowled; I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. [My scores said as much: 88, 102 and 116. Whoops.]

But...what was I saying? Oh yeah: memory. Mine is not so good.

Is it that I just don't give two shits about most things? Is it because I don't really care that I drift daily through life? Do I perhaps see things more haphazardly than most? Maybe, maybe and yes. I do know this, though: if I had lent him a book and he had misplaced it or lost it, I would have damn well not blown up at him when he told me of the misfortune. Shit happens. Buy a new book to replace the old. There is often a simple solution to most "problems."

Or is my memory bad because I drank my brain into pickle juice? Probably not. I guess I just have different priorities as to what is truly important. Maybe I have that off-the-beaten-path bend to my mind that creative people often have. You know what I'm talking about: absent-mindedness, illogical thinking, randomness, et cetera.

Later, when I texted my friend for the name of the book and asked again if I had maybe already given it back to him [I could have sworn that I gave it to him on the day of the Synryd concert] he texted back, "I double-checked. It's not here. Maybe it's in your sloppy house or in your car somewhere." No. And no. And no again, Marky-Mark. It ain't here. And my house is not all that sloppy. And my car? Spotless.

At the bowling alley, he intimated that my house was just plain dirty, making me feel like Pig Pen of the Peanuts comic strip. You know what, Mark? People are fucking different, man. Not everyone is as miserlypenny-pinchinggood with their money as you and not everyone is as analorganized and clean as you are. These are good qualities, for sure. But never let it be said that I would call you out for being yourself. Some people are cat people and some people roll with the dogs. I could not be happier to roll with the dogs.

Anyway, my memory ain't what it used to be and I'll be going to Las Vegas with this guy (and another guy) at the end of May. No drinking for me and I don't like to gamble and he and I will argue over the most inane things...um, why am I going again?

I reckon I forgot.

UNOFFICIAL SIGNS O' SPRING

After a seemingly interminable winter, I am delighted to engage in my unofficial second sure sign o' Spring (MLB Opening Day being the first unofficial sign o' Spring): I am off to chase a little white ball around fieldz o' green. That's right, folks, invest in a hardhat. Adam is off to the links.

Whilst cleaning my golf bag out for the opening of my season, I determined these things: by looking at the old crumpled scorecards, I found that I really really am not a good golfer (and I'm okay with that), I found that my clubs are declining in number (I broke about four clubs last year, simply by swinging), and I found that I had not lost my favorite Detroit Tigers sweatshirt (it was jammed in one of the pockets of the bag--who the hell looks in a golf bag for misplaced clothing?).

So...this should be fun.

Oh, by the way: happy 420 to you all out there. Smoke a J for me.

A QUICK QUESTION

I have a quick question to ask you. You are familiar with the game of bowling, right? (That wasn't the question.) You understand that there is a certain etiquette to the game, right? You know that you do a little dance of "you-go first-no-you" when two people in side-by-side lanes step up to bowl simultaneously, right? (Neither of those were The Question, either.)

Here is the question: Should you be concerned with the bowler two lanes over? I say no. I say that you should concern yourself only with the person immediately to your right or left. Otherwise, what? you end up looking five fricking lanes down, hoping that you're not throwing someone off their game, thus throwing you off your own. It's ridiculous, is what it is.

On Sunday, for my league bowling (I bowled a 161, a 164 and a 144--not too bad) the people two lanes over (against whom we were not even competing) kept looking over at us and our competitors and basically rolling their eyes at us, as if to say, "Hey-Zeus! Those people don't even know the basic premises of courtesy in bowling!" The majorly-pregnant woman was the worst of the lot. I caught her a couple of times, looking over and shaking her head in disbelief. I wanted to shout, "Hey, bee-yotch, you're two fricking lanes over. If you have a problem with seeing us bowl out of the corner of your eye, I think you have some problems with concentration." Yeah, that would have stopped the eye-rolling, huh?

Focus, focus, focus. I should be able to do naked cartwheels in my lane--if it is two or more lanes removed--and not fuck up your approach.

A WEDNESDAY REPRIEVE

I took today off. Work has been going badly for me, recently. Hell, who am I kidding? Ever since I switched to this department, I've been--as Joe Namath would have said--strrrrrugglin'. I have had troubles with attaining my CDL and attaining my Trench Machine Operating qualification, I have been paired with the absolutely worst dude in the department with whom to be paired, I have second-guessed myself (due in large part to the aforementioned dude's abrasive nature) on everything from pipe-connections to fucking digging holes, for God's sake, and I was involved in a 15-second unplanned gas release into a person's home, a situation which could have been avoided had my boss-on-the-job double-checked my neophytic work to ensure that the shut-off had indeed been shut off before he turned the gas on at the curb. I have gotten the crew truck-trailer shebang shamdazzered (stuck) at a tiny dead-end in a ritzy neighborhood--I had to call my capriciously antagonistic co-worker to come help me out. I have often dragged my ass out of bed in the morning, dreading going to work with the fine fellow, dreading just what creative new fuckup I could execute that day. The fine fellow slashed at my fragile (in the new job) self-confidence with his inimitable "humor" from Day One and now he has me believing that I am, in his words, a "motherfucking dumbass." (When I bristled at that unnecessary belittlement, he answered, "It's just a term of endearment, bubba.")

I lack confidence in even the most basic parts of the job.

Word has spread--this place is like a fucking high school--that I am clueless; I have had a co-worker with whom I share a generally amicable relationship tell me that "no one trusts you, Adam." I took that to mean, obviously, that, well, no one believes that I can do the job. I feel that I am an anchor on the jobsites because I am trepidatious about fucking up; I have hamstrung myself with my paralysis by analysis. And now--worse--some people have taken to talking to me like I'm a mentally-slow seventh grader. They don't do it to be mean-spirited; they just don't know how clueless I am--they're appealing to the lowest-common denominator.

"You need to get some thicker skin," my callous colleague informed me. When I responded that, yeah, my skin is a little thin, he said, "Hell, you have no skin." To him, I offer this: my middle finger, jammed straight up his overweight ass.

Here's a thought: when someone is new at something, and trying their best, try not to be a belittling prick-ass. Some people (read: most) don't respond well to acerbic "humor."

Corrosive hilarity works about as well as it looks.

I mentioned to him that, geez, man, you must sure want someone else on your crew with ya, huh? "The only reason you're still with me is that you work your fucking ass off," he said. A compliment, sure, but I will translate for you further. Let's read between the lines: You're still with me because I can get you to do everything and you can bust your ass in the hole and I can sit back and tell you what you're doing wrong. "It's how it was in the old days," he told me. "The lineman would sit in the truck and tell the other guys what to do." Notice that I said guys, plural. The crews used to consist of three people instead of the two we have now. So that could go a long fucking way towards explaining why some linemen, back in the good ole days, were complete and utter lazy pieces of dictatorial shit.

Needless to say, he and I don't click. We are about as far away, personality-wise, as two people can get.

Yesterday, the elephant-train of ineptitude continued. At the start of the day, I went to the counter to get the key to the truck and Bill, the PFL (Principle Field Leader) pulled me aside and told me that, after the morning stretching routine, he needed to see me in his office for a little conference. "Um, all right," I said, scanning my brain for any recent egregious errors that I may have committed. Robin, the union steward, walked past, her face as somber as an Easter Island monolith, and asked if she could talk with me. A feeling of dread began to collect in my stomach. Though I wasn't in fear of losing my job (we're union and it's easier to walk three city blocks on your hands than to get fired from here), I was concerned. "Here's what's going to happen," she began, "you're going to be meeting with Tom and Bill...and Gary (the union president) is here in case you want him in there with you." She gestured in the direction of our union president, who was sitting at the table, chatting with some co-workers, bags like Samsonites under his eyes. "Yeah," I said, thinking litigiously, "I think it'd be good to have him with me."

After the stretching, the three fellas and I walked into the conference to have a little palaver. Tom, the qualifications guy, Bill, Gary and I sat down and started talking. Long story short, they ended up snatching back my qualifications for an indeterminate period. Happy happy, joy joy.

"What can we do," Bill asked, after he informed me of the revocations, "to help you succeed in this department?" I believe Bill to be a good guy, and I knew that he was asking a sincere question. "I don't know what there is for you to do," I said. "This stuff isn't rocket science. I'm just struggling with the most basic things. I know what I need to do, I'm just not executing the procedures properly." "Would more training help you, Adam?" Bill asked. I sighed. "It couldn't hurt, I'll tell you that much. Whatever you guys gotta do, you gotta do. I don't, at this point, know what else to tell you."

I paused. I am not one to crack on other people; I'm not comfortable with talking to management negatively about partners, co-workers. But the main problem, in my eyes, is the dude with whom I am paired up, and I know that he would not hesitate to crack on me to management--in fact, he already had, more than a few times.. Oil and water, man. Ensured that what was said in the room would stay in the room, I said, "I'll tell you what would help: get me the hell away from R___." I felt like a prima donna saying that. In my mind, I was telling myself, Toughen up, ya fuck, and do the job right and there won't be any problems between you and R___. What is this? Third grade? Shut up and do the job. Why do you deserve special treatment? I rationalized it this way: the guy is, much of the time, a prick. He has been a lineman for all of a year and, already, I'm his third partner. People can't stand to work with him because he is a lazy, antagonistic, miserable individual who carries with him his own personal raincloud every-fucking-where he goes. So, fine. Out with it. Much of the reason for my paralysis by analysis was/is having R___ as my work partner. It's the simple truth. It's just the way it is. He sliced through my job-confidence from the beginning and, as the weeks mounted, the unease I had with him deepened exponentially. You can't do an effective job--I don't give a shit what line of work in which you find yourself--going about business as usual with the mindset of doing everything--everything--just right so that you don't get cut down, belittled, fucking cursed at. The dynamic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the other expects abysmal ineptitude and so you happily--or not-so-happily--provide it; regardless of your effort, there will always be something that you didn't do right.

So, internally, I threw up my hands and put myself at the mercy of the committee. Bill read off a laundry list of the qualifications that had been pulled from me--again, for an indeterminate period of time. Pipe-fusing, mechanical coupling, electro-fusing, butt-fusing...they were all pulled from me and I am not to do them, even, I believe, in the presence of a qualified individual. I'll have to get requalified on all; until then, I will be a third-person anchor on crews, unable to volunteer for on-call (money) or work overtime (more money), able only, as I see it, to dig holes. The ultimate grunt.

To add insult to injury, they even pulled my leak soap investigation qualification. Listen: leak soap is putting soap on pipe junctions to see if it bubbles up. My voice rose: "Are you kidding me? My leak soap qual is pulled, too? Do you honestly think I'm that fucking stupid that I can't even tell if a bubble is...bubbling? Come on." I looked squarely at Tom, the sixty-something qualifications guy, a throwback to the Dinosaur Age. I like Tom--he's a good guy--but I was insulted by this soap shit. I mean, come on, I had been a serviceman for three years; I'd used soap every day. I know how to look for leaks. "When the hell did I screw up with soap?" I asked, my voice dripping with unabashed belligerence. Tom calmly opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and rumbled, "'Member that job in Bloomfield?" I thought back and, yes, I remembered that job in Bloomfield. That was the day that I got the crew truck stuck at the dead end, got bailed out by the fine fellow, drove his van back to the jobsite and got out of the van, flustered, sans hardhat and safety glasses (I wear both religiously) just in time to see Tommy-boy strolling up the road in his hunched-shoulders-hands-in-pockets saunter. He gigged me for the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and, apparently, when he stood atop the hole, looking down at me--along with everyone else looking down at me, making me increasingly goldfish-y and self-conscious and nervous about doing things right, damn it--when he asked me if that was "twenty-minute leak soap," he was testing me to see if I had seen the minute fizzing leak on the bottom half of the welded tee. Had I seen it? No. Would I have caught it had I not been so conscious of everyone on top of the hole, looking down on me as I worked? Yes. I would have seen it. Unfortunately, that's the way things go. There is a whole hell of a lot of stand-around time, a whole lot of time for people to watch the guy in the hole who is doing the job. There is no malicious intent--in fact, it is a safety procedure: never leave a man (or woman) alone in the hole--but, for me, struggling with my indecisiveness and self-perceived inadequacies, it is nothing but a recipe for a fuck-up. So, anyway, that obviously went into his report, too, along with the lack of PPE.

So...qualifications revoked, I am now a third wheel. I feel like a fucking loser, my skin shines thin to highlight the blazing incompetence, and...what? I wonder if I'll ever become proficient at this motherfucking job? No. I know I will turn out fine. Like I said: I am far from a moron. Every gosh damned thing that has gone wrong can be tracked back to my second-guessing myself, my wanting to do everything just right. I just need to relax. I need to take a deep breath and bellow to myself, "This is not fucking rocket science! Just do it!"

I do belive that I made my point about working with R___, though. If they want me to succeed--and I know they do, if only for the cost of training me--they'll get me with a different lineman. I'll be the third TMO in just under a year who can't work with the fine fellow. That should tell them something. With every other crew, I'm fine and dandy and I do the job adequately enough. With him? Not so much so. (Understatement of the decade.)

One last thing before I go. I actually fucking dreamt about the job today. I woke up at five-thirty to go to the bathroom and then I lay back down and slept until my alarm went off. In my dream, I was with, like, ten other Consumer Energy employees and we were in this ramshackle house in which a couple of guys resided, We were tracking mud all across the carpet and across the kitchen floor, but the guys seemed not to give two hoots. Apparently, we were all there to turn off their gas service and they were helpful in showing us (for some reason) where the furnace and the water heaters were. I walked through the guy's living room and I saw that he was apparently a Batman fan. Huge posters of the bat sign covered his walls, just above his couch, and, from a distance, a superhero theme song bellowed. It wasn't right, though. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered that the song I heard was not a Batman theme but, instead, the Superman theme. "Can you shut that off?" someone asked me. I told them that I'd try and I began wandering around the house. One room that I looked in seemed to have BDSM equipment, complete with a swing. I closed the door and floated down to the basement. The homeowner was hovering over my shoulder, pointing at the furnace. Apparently, this was where the music/alarm was coming from. "I think it's broke," he mumbled. I pulled off the door to the furnace and the Superman theme song bellowed forth. It seemed to be gaining in volume. "How do you shut this alarm off?!" I shouted. The guy shrugged. I walked back outside and wandered past a gaggle of Consumers employees, looking like ducks in their yellow hardhats.

The Superman theme song grew louder and louder until I finally reached a tree and looked inside. I awoke, then, my alarm clock blaring its insistent message for me to get up. And so I did.

One final thing: to anyone who reads this and thinks, "Hey, Adam, maybe you should consider doing something else. Not necessarily leaving the company, but maybe working in a different department, doing something different," I say this: no fucking way. I say this for a couple of reasons. One, now it's personal. I'll not be seen as an incompetent boob, good only at digging fucking holes. I need to--and I will--prove to everybody that I am perfectly capable of doing something that, back in the day, high school dropouts could do with aplomb. Egotistical much? No. I'm just fed up. With myself, with my partner, with our tension-filled work hours. I will adapt and overcome. And the second reason, of course, is financial. They pay us very well for what we do. In this economy, especially in this Michigan economy, now is not the time to put job-seeking oars into the water. But, basically, it comes down to my ego. I feel fucking humiliated...I'll not have that.

Adapt and overcome, baby.

HOODWINKED BY CARESS

Okay. In my defense, I had just burst forth from a three-and-a-half hour, (assuredly) apnea-addled, "sleep," but, when I saw this link on my homepage, the first things that came to my mind were smooth baby seals...or smooth other things. Jiminy Christmas, Adam! It's a Caress ad. On the MSN homepage, for Pete's (and Will's) sake. Still, the first thought that came to my mind was: Maybe they have some kind of before-and-after pictures in the video. Maybe they show the actual process, zooming in close to show how to get to every nook and cranny....

With my brainpower firing at--at most--a quarter percent, my eyes had seized upon the words "caress," "brazillian," and "pussycat dolls" and so the battle was lost before it had even begun. Clicked I did on the link and I was actually disappointed to see a Pussycat Doll blathering on about winning a trip to Aruba, or something. And then I was treated to a nice jazzy number--audio only, no visual stimulation--of the knockouts crooning in their oh-so inimitable "girl band" style. (True musical geniuses, these women are; let no one tell you that any hot group of girls, accompanied with studio-generated percussion and spacey effects, could sing the same way--they'd be yanking your chain.)

I guess I was expecting a razor and some shaving cream...and a nice geometrically-true landing strip.

PREY-DRIVE

My career choice of working at the utility company has at least given me this: the blazing ability to dig squirrel graves. Lickety-split, it's dug and done.

I don't know whether to be (somewhat) angry at my boys or proud of them. I think I'm leaning towards the former but, what the hell, they're dogs. They are hunters. They are hardwired with a prey drive. Today, it reared its head.

They were outside and I wandered outside to have a smoke and drink some coffee and call my friend, all while enjoying the beautiful weather. I walked outside and Lou and Ollie ran over to me, tails wagging, dog smiles on their faces. I saw the raquetball on the ground, so I picked it up and faked a throw at the tree and waited for Lou to realize that I hadn't thrown the ball. (Oliver's eyes, on the other hand, had not strayed from the little blue target. He regarded it with a look of Okay, jackass, I know you still have it. Are you going to throw the damned thing or should we maybe just wait for a new ball at Christmas?) Lou turned to me, then, and I chucked the ball up in the air--straight up--as high as I could.

Lou looked the opposite way until, hearing it strike the ground, he turned around and streaked for the ball. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something greenish-yellow fall from the tree and hit the ground, about ten, fifteen feet from Lou and Oliver. I had time to think to myself, Huh, was a tennis ball stuck up in the tree, too? before something else plummeted from the branches, about twenty feet up. The brown object hit the ground and twisted and I realized it was a squirrel.

Lou abandoned all thoughts of the raquetball and spun on a dime to close the distance before the squirrel could shake off the shock of falling--relatively-speaking--twenty stories. It wasn't even close. Before I could get to Lou and Ollie, they'd batted the rodent to the ground and had sunk their teeth into its side. "Back!" I shouted. Lou turned to me, the squirrel dangling from the side of his mouth and shook it like a bag of popcorn. The squirrel flopped like a wet noodle.

Eventually I got the dogs by their collars and pulled them from their quarry. As I held them back, I looked at the squirrel. His eyes were wide open and he was breathing rapidly. He tried to gain his feet and get away, but the commands weren't making it from his brain to his legs. His back left leg came into my sight and I saw that his inner thigh and groin area had been torn into flaps of furry red. His grayish muscle poked from a gash near his tail. The kid wasn't looking too good, and I knew what I'd probably have to do.

First thing, though, was to get the boys inside so that I could deal with the situation in a more-subdued atmosphere.

I came back out and sat down in the chair and regarded the unfortunate little guy. His respiration was shallow and quick and his equalibrium was fucked. I was hoping that he was simply stunned, that the wound on his leg would heal over time, that my dogs had not become cold-blooded...um, dogs. It was not to be. As I watched, the squirrel regained his feet and staggered over to the old oak tree. Though he was walking like a drunk, I was hoping that he wasn't too messed up. Though his leg was fucked up and I figured his back might be broken, I was silently cheering him on. I really did not want to have to finish him off.

Aloud, I said, "Come on, kid, you can do it." And he nearly did. With only one working hind leg, he started up the tree and headed for the nook. Right before the nook, he lost momentum. His left rear leg slipped and he was left clinging to the gray-brown bark with one front paw. He reminded me of a cliff-climber, all swaying in the moutain breeze, one handhold the only thing preventing certain death. The kid didn't make it. The bark broke and he fell backwards, doing a lazy backflip before his head connected hard with a gnarled old root. If he looked like he was in bad shape previously, this was the icing on the cake. He lay in a psuedo-fetal position, breathing shallowly, nothing moving but his eyes and his whiskers and his side...barely.

Enough.

Saying a quick silent prayer and telling him aloud that I was sorry, I scooped him up in a flat shovel and walked him over to a bush near the back fenceline. I, for whatever reason, didn't want anyone to see what I needed to do. His body twisted unnaturally (broken back) as I slid him off the shovel underneath the evergreen bush. I went back to the shed and selected the sharp spade shovel. I wanted--needed--to be able to quickly put him out of his misery. No more pain, man. I practiced on a couple of nearby sticks--snap--and then I walked over to the fallen squirrel and, without pause, slammed the point of the shovel down on his neck. Snap.

I closed his eye with a small stick and then dug about three feet down and lay his body in the hole. I put the half-eaten Granny Smith apple in the hole next to him. [Imagine, giving your life for a fucking apple.] I grabbed a piece of concrete from the side of the house and gently lay it down over his body and I finished filling in the hole.

I walked back inside and Lou and Oliver sniffed at my hands, almost as if they'd been expecting me to bring their toy back in the house with me. No such luck. They got dog biscuits, instead.

EDIT: You know what makes this sad story even more sad? I took the boys out, just now, to see how they would do sharing their playground with a squirrel graveyard and, as I walked out to the table and chair, I heard a chick-chluck-chluck from over my head. 'Twas another squirrel in the aforementioned nook. As I watched, it scooted from the nook and up the branch a ways, whereupon it sat, tail twitching, staring down and chattering at me. I sat there for a good ten minutes and it sat there, too--didn't move an inch. It just sat there and burned holes in me with its beady black eyes, raining squirrel curses down on me. It makes me think that I killed its spouse or something. God, is the natural world really this Disney-esque? Damn squirrel is giving me a guilt trip.

BORED

Eye. Am. Bwaneded.

Or so it feels. Perhaps I am just bored. Who knows? I feel that I want to write an extremely sexually-graphic blogpost. Either that or an extremely violent blogpost. Maybe a combination? Yeah, I'm definitely bored.

On the plus side, I went to the Community Center today--after I got off of work early--and I played three games of basketball. So that was good. I got the ole blood pumping and I exercised me lungs a bit. Also I sweat out some toxins and I connected with some real live people instead of a computer keyboard.

Also, since I went to the C.C. virtually right after I got home, I was--sadly?--unable to take my daily nap. Listen: naps are great, they really are. But, to me, they seem to be more of an escape mechanism for me (from Boredom with a capital b) than an essential part of a 35-year-old man's day. I am not a baby. Nor am I an eighty-year-old. I don't need daily naps. And, without said nap, I should be able to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. 1:00 and 1:30? Those aren't reasonable times to retire to the bedroom.

The key is Exercise. That's the key, damn it!

I'm blathering. I am blathering because I am bored. I might be well-off to get a hobby. Maybe I could make little Monster Miniatures. Have the Wolf-Man posed up on my shelf, snarling at the rainy sky. Or the Invisible Man. See him? Nor do I. Which sucks, because it took me three times as long to complete him, seeing as how I kept losing him all the time. Maybe I could make a traintrack down in the basement, have it snake and weave through bundled stuff and underneath the ping-pong table and past the doggies' cage. Wouldn't that be swell?! Maybe I could wield a drawring pen and create vast panoramas of desolate desert scenes. Maybe I could include camouflaged Daffy Ducks in the scenery. Kinda make it like a "Where's Daffy?" type of thing. Waldo? Eat your heart out.

Maybe I could just read a book and go to sleep. Maybe I could surf the Interwebs for porn, porn, porn. Maybe I could wash the dishes or wash my sheets. Maybe I could scour the bathroom or brush the dogs' fur coats. Maybe I could juggle pennies; maybe I could shave my head (and maybe my balls) and then take a shower. That sounds good. Thanks for being my sounding board, y'all.

BORED: Bring On Rigorous Erectile Dynamics

BORED: Barring Obvious Ramifications, Everybody Dreams

BORED: B--

Ah, fuggit.

:-)

SLEEP PATTERNS

And now it's 11:15 at night. I think the bedtime of 1:00 or 1:30 has begun to catch up with me. After a full day of trying to keep my eyes open during training on pipe location, I came home, let the boys out, lay down on the couch and was jerked out of a semi-doze by Oliver baying like a madman (maddog?) as a squirrel had the gall, the audacity to be...well, squirrely. Into the house came the boys and down the basement they went until the mud on their paws dried enough to flake off.

I passed the open door to my bedroom on my way to the bathroom and my bed looked so damned inviting I had to test out its softness. Three hours later, I awoke.

Nice.

It was a beautiful day outside--the first in a while, perfect for dog-walking or picking up poop or getting my bicycle ready for the season--and I wasted it by listening to the siren song of my comfortable (com-fort-a-bull) bed/nest.

Again, nice.

And now it's 11:19. And bedtime is nearing.

I hate it when I do this. But gosh damn! That bed was soooooo fricking comfortable.

Tomorrow, if I get out of training early (which I fully anticipate), I will go to the Community Center--I just got a membership there about a week or two ago and haven't used it yet--and I will play some basketball. I will elevate my fucking blood pressure and I will get my legs moving and I will get high on endorphins.

Use it or lose it, Boffo.

This life-cycle I have going on right now is for the birds.

Happy Thursday, everyone.