30 minutes
30 Days
Perhaps
Yesterday was Saturday, November 1st, 2014. All Saints Day. An old friend’s birthday that for some reason I always remember. Probably because it’s such an easy date to remember.
November 1st always reminds me of high school. I know that we always had All School Mass on All Saints Day. I don’t know exactly what All Saints Day is but I think it’s pretty much in the name. It’s a day for all saints. They all already get a day that’s theirs (to be shared with other saints though because there’s just too many of them…I just tried Googling “How many saints are there” and of course got a bunch of convoluted answers. But apparently the short answer is over 10,000. I suppose in like the history of the world this is a pretty exclusive club given the way human population works but it seems a little overcrowded by my standards. Like if the saints get some sort of VIP room in Heaven, by now it doesn’t feel so VIP anymore. Like when they start letting black guys into Country Clubs…”What’s this guy the saint of? Stomach Cramps!! Aw fuck me I gotta go. I don’t understand this place anymore” that’s a quote from St Francis of Assisi. I read it on a Buzzfeed quiz. Which Dead Saint Quote Are You?)
Anyway so yesterday I woke up on the couch. I had drank heavily the night before and ended up there. I hate falling asleep on the couch but not as much as I hate having to get up if I’ve fallen asleep on the couch. So needless to say the couch always wins. I think I slept in a sitting position from about 11PM – 2AM and then finally laid down. I woke up drooling. Super cute.
I grogged around for a while. Ate some leftover pizza. I guess by some I mean the rest of the pizza I didn’t eat the night before. Let’s not cut cards. Whenever I order a pizza there’s some weird OCD thing that exists in my head that says I have to eat it within 24 hours. I think that’s called “Overeating.” Who knows.
Ate the pizza. Watched some Golden Girls. The episode where Rose’s sister comes to visit and she’s a total bitch to Rose. Doesn’t invite her to anything, constantly hanging out with Blanche and Dorothy and then she sleeps with Blanche’s boyfriend. What a ho. I didn’t see the resolution but I hope they kicked her out on her ass. There was also a B story line that involved Sophia mixing up 2 giant dogs and then Rose figuring out which one was which by calling its name? I don’t know. As a die hard Golden Girls fan, I have to believe I’m missing a part of that plot because it’s extremely inconsistent to have Sophia not be smarter than Rose. Whatever, I’m sure I’ll see it again before I die to clarify.
After Golden Girls I signed on to my work computer to do work. Work sucks right now. Works sucks all the time but it really sucks right now. I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to think about my own life. And that really makes me feel discontent. That’s the best word I can think of for that.
I worked most of the day. Really the rest of the day. I didn’t really stop looking at my computer until 9 o’clock. I showered in there too. (Not in the computer. I didn’t shower in the computer. I showered in the span of time otherwise known as “the day.”) Definitely spent some time browsing the internet. Watched American Horror Story which feels kinda calm this year. Or maybe it just feels really sad? That show always makes me feel extreme emotions. It tires me out.
One of my roommate’s best friends came over. We all went to school together. It was nice to see her but it also made me realize how impersonable I feel when I’m always thinking about work. It’s always stressing me out because I always think I’m not doing something and someone is mad about it. When my head’s in that space all the time it’s hard to concentrate on the people and things that are in front of me. Frustrating.
They left to go to a Halloween party. Dressed as Wayne and Garth. I finished working and walked to Walgreen’s to buy some Epsom Salts to soak my feet because I think that’s what I’m turning into. An aging man who needs things like Epsom Salts readily on hand for any home remedies to cure his ailments.
Came home and soaked my feet. It felt good.,
And then I fell asleep in my bed this time.
Today was November 2nd, 2014.
I woke up thinking about The Glass Menagerie. To be fair I’ve been thinking about that play a lot recently. Mostly not thinking about the play, but thinking about a funny joke I heard that I’ve been trying to find a way to fit into context for people who maybe don’t know the play that well. I think it might be impossible. The joke is essentially taking a line from the play and changing it around to make it funny.
The line is “He thought I said blue roses but I said I have pleurosis”
The joke is, “He thought I said blue roses but I said I have lyme disease” or any other disease that sounds nothing like pleurosis. This is only funny if you know the show and it may not even be funny then. I think it’s hilarious.
Anyway, I woke up thinking about the actual show and thought that I was having an epiphany of a revival but I wake up a lot of mornings thinking I have the best creative idea I’ve ever had only to reflect on it later and it sounds so weird. Once I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down a skit I had just dreamt that I was actually laughing out loud about. When I woke up and re read it, it essentially boiled down to “The person keeps walking off and walking back on chewing more and more gum until they’re covered in gum.” If that makes any sense to you, you’re either fucking crazy or a comedic genius cause for the life of me I can’t remember why that’s funny.
I started reading the Glass Menagerie and it was giving me a lot of anxiety. I was really aware of the building tension and small releases that were in the script. I didn’t finish reading it but I believe I will tonight.
I realized that it was daylights savings time while still in bed and got super excited. So I used the extra hour to create a playlist on Spotify of the songs that Clear Channel deemed inappropriate to play on the radio following 9/11. I think it’s actually a pretty decent playlist. There’s some really good songs on there mixed in with like some shitty death metal that no one was listening to anyway.I feel like I’ll use it eventually
I finally got out of bed at 11 which in normal time would have been 12. Showered. And got ready to go out to Evanston to visit my friends who just had a baby girl who also happens to be my goddaughter. She is the cutest. Thank God because if she wasn’t and I had to lie about how cute she was I would have felt really uncomfortable but she is legitimately a cute baby and I don’t think I’m being biased.
Stayed there for a little while and then got in an Uber to go home. The Uber driver was great. I kinda wanted to hang out with her the rest of the day. She was from Bulgaria. She was trying to juggle organizing different family member’s schedules and telling each other where the other one was. Her son’s car had died so he was sharing with his dad. It was a crazy process. I wanted to be like “Girl, you gotta let them figure that out on their own. You can’t always be the mouthpiece” but instead I said “That’s what happens when you say you’re gonna be the one to tell someone where they…when you offer to tell one person where another person is. Then you’re telling 5 people where the others are. It’s too much.” I’m a real sage and a wordsmith. She nodded and chuckled. What I interpreted to essentially be her saying “I don’t know what the hell you just said. English is my second language you asshole.” But we recovered.
I knew we were back on track when we had the following discussion (UL = Uber Lady, J = Me)
UL: I drove down from Wisconsin yesterday and I think there’s something in the air
J: Yeah?
UL: Yeah it was the same smell down here as up there and all the way down. I think there’s something they’re not telling us
J: …What?
UL: I don’t know how to tell you what I’m saying.
J: You think there’s something in the air? Like that’s being put into the air?
UL: Yeaaaah (uncomfortable now that she’s shared this weird information) I don’t know…
(Silence, I thought about dropping it but then I was like, I will only meet this lady once)
J: Are you saying like a sewage smell?
UL: No, I don’t know how to say…
J: I know I smelled a sewage smell earlier by my apartment but that happens a lot
UL: Yeah…You know how a couple years ago the Chinese had to where the masks on their face because of the…uhhh
J: Because of SARS?
UL: Yeaaaah
On that last “Yeaaaah” she looked at me in the rearview mirror with a face that said “You see my point now right?” I still didn’t. I let it go basically inferring that this woman is living in fear that the government is pumping SARS and/or Ebola into the air and she just got a huge whiff of it on her way home from Wisconsin. I could only go so deep into her psyche, it was like a 15 min cab ride. When I exited the cab, I told her “Good luck with…everything!” and shut the door.
I went to Mariano’s for some food and stayed within budget. Then I stopped by Sears to pick up some towels. There, as I was leaving, another foreign woman stopped me to confuse me. She said “Door’s closed” pointing to the door that I was about to go through. “Oh, is it locked?” I asked, and she just stared up at me without any follow up. I pushed the door and it opened fine. “Oh OK, thank you,” she said, and I walked out. I was totally clueless as to what had just occurred or what favor I had done her.
When I got home I cleaned a bunch of stuff in a flurry. Thinking about the end game at hand which was only to do more work. Finished that. Ate a bland and tasteless fettuccine alfredo dinner, most of which I threw away. And then, here I am, deciding that I need to take at least 30 mins out of every day to write and it turned into an hour.
No need for a closing, I’m trying not to worry about form too much right now.
Toodles
#BeYourWorst 