Unforgettable days

March 14, 2013 1 Comment

Six days ago I finally wrote about my day which occurred twelve days ago. I still have not written about the day which followed, the Sunday, the day that is now eleven days history. I have not been putting it off because I am reluctant to write about that day. I have put it off because as time goes by I am worried more about losing the memories of the recent past. That day will forever be etched in my memory. It doesn’t matter when I write about it, it will feel as fresh as yesterday.

You see, that was the day I saved a best friend’s life.

The day before had been spent helping her move into her boyfriends house. It was a big day, an emotional day, an exhausting day. At the end she went to bed but the rest of us stayed up partying. At six or so in the morning she woke up to find us all still awake and hanging out in the kitchen.

She was understandably pretty annoyed with this. I can’t speak to her exact state of mind but I have a feeling she was upset with her boyfriend for inviting people back to his parent’s house and for not going to bed with her.

I wasn’t paying much attention to her arrival at the party but then she collapsed  She has epilepsy and was having a seizure. Her boyfriend and I rushed in to help her safely to the ground where she lay motionless in his lap.  A couple minutes past and she was not showing any signs of coming out of it. I have probably seen her have more seizures than anyone and I could tell this one was different.

I asked someone to call 911, someone who knew where the home phone was, or at least someone with a local number. The ambulance arrived in fairly short order and I met them at the door. I explained the situation and they went to work. The standard protocol is to administer a heavy dose of diazepam. I assume that they did that but it wasn’t working. I heard them say, “We are loosing her”. They cleared everyone out of the kitchen and I broke into tears.

People die from seizures.  In fact, as many people die each year from seizure disorders as from breast cancer. We had already lost one friend with epilepsy in the past year, I could not bare losing another, especially not one of my very best friends.

They loaded her into the ambulance to get her to the hospital. My adrenaline was racing. One of the party guests was pregnant and wasn’t drinking. We made plans to drive her boyfriend and me to the hospital.

—-

They next thing I knew I was waking up on the couch in the living room. My energy had finally given out and I had collapsed.  I had no recollection of falling asleep and now I was alone in this huge house out in the woods. I was alone, trying to get a hold of anyone I could but to no avail. I was alone in a state of panic for two hours before the boyfriend and his mother returned.

The boyfriend had not slept at all and was wiped out. I helped him move my friend’s couch into the basement and then his mother drove me back to my van. I got in my van and headed to the hospital to see my friend, but realizing that this would take me past my friend Scott Harold’s house, I gave him a call.

Scott Harold is the founder and CEO of the non-profit I will forever be tied to called, Rock The Cause. For the longest time I was considered the “moral compass” of the organization. I saw my role as that of preventing the organization from “selling out” to corporate interests. As the organization grew, their need for corporate collaboration became inevitable. I saw my role as an anchor turn into just a drag. I still have my doubts about some of the partnerships that have been made but I have no doubts about the good work they are doing.

For the past many months, Rock The Cause have been working with Zach Sobiech, a 17 year old singer/songwriter who is dying of osteosarcoma, a rare form of cancer that is expected to take his life within months. His story and his music are so incredibly; it moved me to tears to hear Scott tell me about him. I’m in tears now as I am writing about this. If his life does not embody the meaning of “Life Sucks, So What?” then I don’t know what does.

And then on to the hospital to see my friend who nearly died from epilepsy. I was grateful to find her no longer nearly dying. In fact, she was bitching about the food and how this hospital sucked compared to her last one. This may not have been any comfort to her in the moment but it was of great comfort to me. She was actually a pretty difficult patient but I wanted her to know that I still loved her. After spending a good hour or so with her I offered to buy her a coffee and told her that I would check in with her the next day.

Then I needed to get a drink. I had potential plans with this guy but he was not available so I called the woman I had not bought a drink for earlier in the week. She met me at the 19 bar. I explained how not buying her a drink went against my core values. We talked about honesty. We talked about lying. We talked about sex. We talked about all sorts of things until my bff showed up.

After bar close we went back to my bff’s place. We all got comfortable and after some heated discussions about poverty my bff passed out in her bed. My other friend and I were left alone on her couch. We began exploring each other’s bodies. There is much excitement to be found in another person’s body. That is something I haven’t had enough of lately. I just can’t tell you how much I missed feeling a cock in my mouth.

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How did I get here?

March 14, 2013 Leave a comment

… waking up before 8 am on a Thursday morning with a half drank beer on my nightstand and four days worth of blogging to catch up on.

I didn’t mean to go to bed so early last night. It would have been nice to get some writing done but I was exhausted when I got home from work. I didn’t get home until 9:30 pm, much later than usual. That’s because I had met a dear old friend for diner after work. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity since I hadn’t seen her in far too long. We live in different cities but as it turned out yesterday we both found ourselves in Lakeville at the same time.

You see, I was running late after over-sleeping. I had been up drinking and talking on the phone until 3 am the night before. That was actually my second two hour phone conversation of the night. All that after spending two hours and forty-five minutes, mostly on hold, dealing with the IRS to prove that I am who I say I am so that I could get my tax refund. It was while I listening to the same 60-second hold music loop over and over again that I first decided to crack a beer.

After dropping off my daughter at her mother’s and picking up some things I needed from Target I returned home to find a cryptic 4883C letter from the IRS telling me that they needed more information to process my return accurately. A quick Google search gave me a little more information about this leter and let me know that I would probably be on hold for a very long time. I’m all for fighting identity theft so I really felt for the woman at the other end of the phone. She has a challenging job to do and probably deals with a lot of stressed out and irritated people.

Earlier that day I played Monopoly with my daughter. Monopoly is an evil game and I hate that I am so good at it. This was even more evil. It was the Star Wars edition. My daughter chose the Princess Lea piece so being her father I had to choose Darth Vader. I would rather have been C-3PO. He’s so gay. I think my daughter enjoyed the game but I took no pleasure in taking all of her money. At least it wasn’t real money. They were imperial credits after all.

When daughter got up Tuesday morning we called my son, her brother, to wish him happy birthday. We had meant to do this the night since that would have been his actually birthday but we got distracted. Pretty shitty, huh?

Monday had been a long day of running around. I had taken my daughter to her therapy appointment. Yes, even my amazing daughter can benefit from therapy. I just wish that her therapist was closer to either her mother’s apartment of my house. But no, my daughter lives in a third ring northern suburb and the therapist is in a third ring southern suburb. That was not my idea.

Before that I had to pickup materials from one of my delivery clients. We had arranged to meet in south Minneapolis so it was fortunate that I woke up in south Minneapolis. How did that happen?

Oh yeah… Sunday! Sunday was a fun day as Sundays are meant to be. It ended at the 19 bar as many nights do when I’m hanging out with my bff. We arrived at the bar by Pedi-taxi. I totally want to do that. I’ve been trying to figure out what other kind of work I could do to make money and I think biking people around downtown would be right up my alley. We were coming from a fund raiser at Hell’s Kitchen for one of my Harmony Park Kiddie Village friends who is raising money to be a Student Ambassador in the UK.

Before that we had a lovely diner at Cafe Maude in Loring Park. Neither of us had ever eaten there and my bff wanted to take me out after I took her to the Opera. We saw Hamlet; so many murders that day, not to mention the huge murder of crows in Loring Park.

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Life goes on

March 7, 2013 Leave a comment

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. That’s what happens when I go to bed early. At least it gave me a couple hours to write before going to work. I’m still not done writing about the weekend. Haven’t even finished Saturday.

Actually, I’m starting to think that I’m doing it all wrong and should divide it out into two separate things. Also, thinking I should just slap it together and be done with it all. I’m also starting to think that writing a blog about how I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing is a brilliant idea! I’m still hoping it can become something more though.

So this is the challenge I faced this morning: My band leader and hir wife needed to get to the airport and I needed to fill my van with newspapers to deliver my route. I could have put a back seat in my van to transport both of them to the airport, then driven back to my house, removed the back seat and drove to CityPages and loaded my van with papers so I could go to work.

I could have done that but it would have seemed completely back ass-wards to me to have done it that way. I used to program logistics systems – it’s still in my brain.

The airport is in the same city as my route. The road to the airport takes me:

FIRST: past CityPages, where I pick up the papers

SECOND: past the lovely couple in desperate need of getting to the airport.

And they were desperate… well not that desperate… they could have called a cab but they would rather give their twenty dollar cab fair to a friend. Lucky me! I got to be that friend. After being rejected by five other people they turned to me. I’m a pretty safe bet. If you need me, there is a good chance that I’ll be there for you. But this system only works if you try everyone else first. Oh, and you may wind up sitting on a stack of newspapers.

I don’t even care about the twenty dollars. If you need my help and I can give it to you, I will. It’s never about money to me, but I’m not so rich, or so proud as to not accept it. I kind of think this is the ideal place to be. I want to be in a place where I don’t need any more money but if it comes my way I can use it to make my life and the lives of the people around me better.

My friend who I visited with after work asked if I could pick her up some Vanilla Almond Milk before coming to see her. She said she had ten-spot if I could give her $5 change. Seriously?!? The milk is $3, with my co-op discount, even less. Still, she insisted that I take the $5 as a delivery charge; so I did.

All totaled, I made $200 today for doing my newspapers, $20 for delivering my friends to the airport and $2 for delivering milk. I also spent $60 on gas, $6 on lunch, $10 on coffee, $3 on sugar, $125 on an e-cig system and $18 on whiskey, so basically I broke even.

… and life goes on!

 

 

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Not dead yet

March 5, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s okay. I’m not dead. I know I haven’t posted since last Friday but I’m still here. I’m still writing. I just had a really monumental weekend and it’s taking a while to get the actual events into a post.

I was up until 3:30 in the morning last night reading and writing and I still think I’m only half way done with Saturday. It’s not going to get done tonight either. I just got home from running around all day and I am completely drained. I am struggling to form sentences I’m so tired. Plus I’m getting up early tomorrow to drive friends to the airport before work. It’s going to be an early night.

I feel that it is well deserved though. I’ve had a full day. I woke up at 9:30 because I agreed to drive a friend around so she could do some things she needed to get done. I was under the influence of alcohol when I agreed to do this but I would have done it anyway. That’s what friends are for and it was great to spend the day with her. Plus she made me an awesome purple and green hat that sparkles. It was a win all around.

What I hadn’t accounted for was the effect snow would have on my day. Before I could do anything I needed to shovel a foot of snow off my side walk… and then my van. The roads were pretty awful in some spots. It made driving feel more like surfing at times. It’s a skill I’ve gotten pretty good at.

I don’t know if I can say the same thing about the guy I helped push out of his driveway. I will always stop to help someone who is stuck if I can… and I usually can. Two minutes out of my life is nothing but it can make a huge difference in someone else’s life. I’m just questioning whether the difference I made this time will be a positive one. This guy was clueless. He had no idea how to rock the car back and forth. He was flooring the gas and the wheels were just spinning. He also didn’t seem to understand the concept of straightening out the wheels. Maybe he didn’t speak English, maybe he was deaf, but I fear that we may have just released his from this predicament only to have him wind up in a bigger one down the road.

My day wasn’t completely free from driving follies. While driving my friend home I could hear metal dragging on the road underneath my van. I pulled over and crawled under the van to take a look. There was a big rusted out concave piece of metal stuck to the muffler. It took some work but I was able to detach it. I don’t know what it is. I suspect it’s from my van but I don’t know for sure. In any case, my van is running fine without it.

I picked up my daughter at her mom’s apartment  She had the day of off school because of the snow. We had half an hour to kill before her circus class so I suggested we stop by my house and see if the phone we ordered had arrived. There was no phone but in the 30 minutes we were parked outside my house the snow plow had come by and completely plowed me in. I had to shovel my van out before I could go anywhere.

That wouldn’t have been so bad but I was already running out of steam and having a hard time walking. Just before noticing the snow plow situation I was putting bags in the back and slipped underneath the van banging my shin against the door frame. I’m just glad my kids are accustom to hearing foul language.

I’m fucking done with this day! I’m going to bed.

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Today’s ambitions

February 22, 2013 1 Comment

Today was my day to get shit done. I always say it’s good to have goals. You can’t get anything done with out them. I also say it’s good not to be too specific because things rarely ever go as planned.

I had plans to hang out with a friend last night. I figured we would just chill for a bit, watch some TV, drink a glass of wine or two and I would get home at a decent hour, get up early and get to work. I don’t know why I thought that. That is not the way things go with this particular friend. She is one of my very best friends and I haven’t seen her much of her lately since she has been spending most of her time in the Suburbs with her new boyfriend  – you know how those things goes. Then when I learned that she had a box of wine and was planning on getting drunk with me it became clear that I would be spending the night.

SIDENOTE: If you have been following this blog, or if you continue to follow this blog, keeping up with my friends may seem like an impossible task. That is by design. My friends and family are the most important parts of my life. I need to write about them but they have not signed up for this so I will not name them. I can’t guarantee anonymity but I can at least offer plausible deniability.

I have many people whom I consider my best friends. These are a combination of people that have been in my life for many, many years as well as people that are very active in my life right now and trust will always by part of my life. They are people that I talk to every day or so as well as people that have moved away or moved on to other activities and I might might only talk to once a month or even less. Still, I know that if I ever needed them, they would always be there for me, as I would be there for them. They are people where no matter how long it has been since we last talked, we can pick up the phone and continue the friendship as if we saw each other yesterday.

Throughout my life I have had, maybe, twelve people who fit this description. Some inevitably decide to leave, new people enter my life and sometimes old friends return. At any given time there have never been more than six. This seems like all I can handle at one time. My hope is that as more time passes, as I become a better person and as my relationships grow stronger, I will be able to handle more. But maybe not, best friends are a lot of work sometimes.

Last night was wonderful, and worthy of sacrificing today’s ambitions. Knowing that someone knows the real you, and loves you anyway, is the greatest feeling in the world. I got to feel that twice last night. At 2:04 am another best friend called me up just to tell me that she loves me. She was expecting to leave a message but I was still up. I guess we must have stayed up until close to 4 am.

I woke up this morning by 10 am. I made coffee and had a cigarette, then I woke up my friend. I helped her haul some stuff up from the basement then I needed to get home. My van was covered in snow which was still falling and continued to fall all day. I got home and shoveled my sidewalk. I still felt like I could get everything done so I headed in to get to work.

I pulled out my laptop, set it up on my kitchen counter, put a pot of water on the stove for coffee, gathered up my mail, checked Facebook on the computer in my bedroom and then wondered… where is my coffee?

Oh shit! I left a pot of bowling water on the stove! This is not the first time this has happened. If you have ADD you probably know this experience. I don’t, but I’m a Type A personality with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome so I can relate to a lot of the struggles faced by people with ADD. Actually, being Type A is probably why I have CFS, and as a result, why I’m an less Type A than I was before getting sick.

I ran back to my kitchen to find the pot on the stove, bone dry and smoldering. This is not a good idea when using a Teflon. Apparently you can get Teflon poisoning from overheating. I washed out the pan and boiled fresh water and made my coffee. I had a few sips but it still tasted burnt.

Shortly thereafter I started having flu symptoms. I laid down but I couldn’t sleep. I decided to watch House of Cards on Netflix. It’s pretty good. I’m not a big TV fan but I do find that I like non-commercial television… and shows that get canceled within the first three years because they don’t make any money. Last night I was introduced to Shameless which is a Showtime remake of the British show which I have seen. I think I like the people in that show better than the people in House of Cards but they are all pretty fucked up. BTW, fucked up is very endearing to me.

So that was my day; not as productive as I hoped, but there is always Monday. I am feeling better. Actually, I’m feeling kind of drunk but that is a result of alcohol poisoning, which in my opinion, is better than Teflon poisoning.

—–

TEASERS:

Tomorrow I’m going to see Testament at First Avenue with my bff, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. This will be my big night out thanks to the gift I received Tuesday.

Sunday I have tickets to Other Desert Cities at the Guthrie Theater. I asked a cute boy to go with me but he is at a conference at the college my son attends and doesn’t know if he will be back in time. I may be scrambling to get a date at the last minute.

Yeah, Monday will be my day to get shit done. Let’s see how that goes 😉

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A nearly perfect day

February 17, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s always a good sign that I’m going to have a good day when I wake up on my best friend’s couch. Almost anything is better than waking up alone in my own bed. Since my son left for college the whole empty nest thing has really sunk in. I didn’t think it would be that big a deal. He was a very independent teenager and, despite my disabilities, I’ve always been a very active person so we didn’t  actually see a whole lot of each other the past few years. Still, I miss having him  here. It’s a much bigger change and a much greater adjustment than I had bargained for.

So not being alone is good. A sunny Sunday is good. And, yes, I did get out of the house yesterday which is also very, very good. As I was writing my blog yesterday I got a text from a friend whom I hadn’t seen I quite some time. She was contacting me to see if I sill wanted to get together for a beer at the 19 bar. With the way I was feeling I was kind of hoping she would blow me off, as often happens in my life, for which I am grateful as often as I am disappointed. As it turned out though, this was just the motivation I needed to get my ass in gear and hop on my bike and venture out into the wintry tundra. It was pretty cold last night and a 10 mile bike ride to the bar but I didn’t care; I needed to get the fuck out of my house. I had been cooped up in my house for three days without going anywhere. In fact the only person I had seen was Venus when she stopped by to give me my tour check.

The 19 Bar is my favorite gay neighborhood bar. It’s a gay bar for sure but a lot of straight people in the neighborhood go there. It just happens to be in a gay neighborhood. So it’s a gay bar, it’s a neighborhood bar, it’s a gay neighborhood, we could call it a neighborhood gay bar but I like to refer to it as a gay neighborhood bar. I think that’s more accurate.

Like most bars with a numbers for their name, the 19 Bar is named after it’s address at 19 W 15th street. The 19 Bar is also the oldest gay bar in the Twin Cities. Way back in the day, even back in the day I first stepped into the establishment, the only way you would have known that there was a bar behind the door with a 19 on it was if someone had told you. It’s still a pretty discrete location but there is a sign with a pink triangle and I think some neon. I guess that’s progress.

I knew I could get to the bar without any trouble but getting home might be another story. I sent my best friend a text to see what she was up to. She lives in the neighborhood and the 19 is her regular bar and I know I can always crash at her place. Okay, it may sound like I’m just taking advantage of her, and you are welcome to think that, but this is how I survive, by knowing and making use of my resources and these resources have been cultivated through a life of generosity, honesty and love and are received with tremendous gratitude and humility.

So here is my recipe for a nearly perfect day:

  • Coffee – Need I say more. If I’m addicted to anything it is coffee in the morning. Don’t even want to know what life would be like without that.
  • Sun – Especially in the winter I need sun. We simply don’t get enough of it and it totally effects my mood. I need the Vitamin D. I’ve been taking 2000 IU of D3 everyday and it helps but there is nothing like actually seeing the sun.
  • Dishes –  Okay, I love washing dishes. If I wasn’t a famous rockstar and paperboy I would totally want to be a dishwasher. I love washing my own dishes but washing someone else’s is even better.
  • Beer –  I had my two favorite kinds of beer today. My favorite is the kind someone else bought. My second favorite is beer at happy hour prices. Yup, I had both today.
  • Friends – Mean everything.
  • Biking –  I haven’t been on my bike since the 28th of January. That’s so not right. Biking is essential to a perfect day.
  • Pizza – Pizza is the perfect food.
  • Chocolate – No wait, maybe it’s chocolate.
  • Doing something that scares me – I was perfectly happy to have a simple, comfortable, easy going Sunday but really, no day is complete without doing something that scares the hell out of you.
  • Dive bar – I was biking by Halek’s bar, as I always do on my way home, but this time I just decided that I had to stop in for a quick one.
  • Music – I love their jukebox!
  • My kids – I talked to both my kids today. They are both doing really well. At the end of it all, that is all that matters.
  • Boobies – Okay, I don’t know why I am including this but yes, boobs were part of my day. If you are trying to have a perfect day there have got to be breasts in there somewhere. Boobs are awesome!

So why was it only nearly perfect? To be honest, it’s because I don’t know what perfect is. Maybe I don’t believe in perfect. For all I know, everything is perfect just as it is. Anyway, perfect is something to strive for, not something to achieve. That would take all the mystery out of it.

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Albuquerque – Part 2

February 11, 2013 Leave a comment

I know, these are going to be out order but I simply did not have any time to write yesterday; Fetish Revolution – Part 2 will have to wait. As it is, I only have about half an hour to write this morning before we head out again. It’s a mad dash to get back to Minneapolis – crazy, I know. Why would we want to leave the sunny southwest for snowy Minnesota? What’s even crazier is that it is currently warmer in Minneapolis than it is in Albuquerque. Oh, you Mother Nature! In her infinite wisdom, is she just preparing us for what’s to come? I suppose not, but it’s harmless to believe there is divine intervention at play.

So yesterday began with a phone call from Venus at 10 am letting us know that we needed to get up, check out of the hotel and get on the road. When I heard the phone I was hoping it was a call to go out for breakfast and that I could decline and get another couple hours of sleep but there was no such luck. It was time to get back to work. I was pretty hungover for reasons I will have to explain later but in the meantime I sure you can fill in the blanks.

To be honest, I sometimes think that being hungover is easier than what I deal with getting moving on a normal day. The pain in my head clouds out the pain in my body and makes me focus on the task at hand. Besides, hangovers go away in time; chronic illness does not. Without a doubt, yesterday was easier than today. Today is just miserable. On the plus side, being on the road does greatly simplifies my life. I only have to deal with whatever I brought with me. When it’s time to leave I just need to pack up everything I own and go – no decisions.

On our return to Albuquerque we drove the southern route which took us through Los Cruses, NM. I guess there was snow in Flagstaff so this turned out to be the most logical course but it also meant we could stop by and see our friends David and Donnie for a brief visit. They are such a wonderful couple and I miss them terribly. I wish we could have stayed longer but we still had another three hours before we would reach our final destination.

It was almost 11pm before we pulled in at Jule’s in Albuquerque. We had just enough time to exchange pleasantries and catch up a bit. I helped myself to a beer in the fridge and Venus and I slipped into the hot tub. Knowing that we had a hot tub waiting for us may have been the only thing that got up through those last few hours.

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Blursday

February 1, 2013 Leave a comment

I seriously don’t know why I ever plan anything for Thursdays. I always think, “Oh, I’ll be fine. I can do that.” Nope, not likely. Wednesdays tend to wipe me out and I need a day to recover. I need a day to be extremely unreliable. So all in all I feel pretty damn good about what I did manage to do yesterday.

Hell, I wrote 1,500+ words. Don’t know the last time I’ve done that. I’ve been wanting to for quite some time. I spend a lot of time thinking so it’s about time I started writing down those thoughts in my head. And that is something I really need to do. Get thoughts out of my head. I also need to write down what I do everyday because I just can’t remember this shit. I can’t tell you what I did last week. I mean maybe I could if I though really long and hard but my past starts to get really fuzzy really fast. Most of it I don’t miss but it can get frustrating. If I can manage to take an hour out of each day to document my life I can see this being of great benefit to me. If I share it, who knows, maybe it can even be of benefit to someone else. At the very least it will hold me accountable and I want to live my life with honesty and integrity.

So as this blog is starting to take form what I see it being is a fairly comprehensive documentation of my life, the highs and the lows, the trials and tribulations, from the mundane to the magnificent. And then shared with the world in the present day, not as a memoir of the past but as it happens. I don’t know if that has been done before. I don’t know if anyone will find it interesting but I think it has the potential to be. This is my art. This is my experiment. What it becomes is yet to be known. Of course I have to make sure that I have the time to do the living part or I won’t have much to write about. Yesterday’s post took nearly four hours to write. I guess one of my fears is that becoming a blog writer will turn me into a boring person. Oh well, sometimes I am kind of boring.

After yesterday’s writing session I ran off to meet my friend and pick up the chowder she made for me. I didn’t even take a shower. I just threw on the clothes I was wearing the day before and ran out the door. I didn’t have that far to go but I drove anyway. In part because of time constraints but mostly because it was too damn cold out and even I won’t bike under certain conditions.

My friend was getting some work done by Miss Kitty at Live Fast Die Young Tattoos in NE Minneapolis. For someone who doesn’t have any tattoos I sure do love them. And there is something really magical about a tattoo shop. It was a fun time. I enjoy watching people get tattooed and my friend is one hell of a story teller and she had some good ones to share yesterday. BTW, I’m just referring to her as “my friend” because I haven’t decided whether to use people’s names in this blog. I may find that I have to. It may get too confusing or become too awkward not to but in the meantime I will try to protect my friend’s anonymity. It may turn out that people will just need to accept that if they interact with me parts of their life will be publicized.

After that I ran to the tobacco store then home to eat the chowder before my daughter got there. Fantastic chowder by the way! Really hearty, creamy and rich. Other than a few peanuts, that wound up being the only thing I ate yesterday.

My daughter was dropped off by her mother around six. Usually I would have picked her up but she had an after-school class so plans got a bit screwed up. I was actually quite grateful for this. I certainly could use the time and I did not want to go back out in the cold.

I had a wonderful evening with my daughter. We played two games of chess. I haven’t played in a long time but my 14 year old daughter is just learning. She is a remarkably brilliant kid but I still managed to beat her both games. We’ll see how long that lasts. I don’t believe in letting kids win but I did let her know what my strategy was and helped her not make suicidal moves.

After that we watched Rango. I do love me some Johnny Depp and chameleons are bad-ass! After that my daughter went to bed and I returned to my room to watch The Daily Show. I wanted to go have one more cigarette but was simply too tired to move and I faded off into dream land… well almost. I did get a phone-call at 12:54am that woke me up briefly after which I turned off my ringer and was out.

I have much to do today including much that I had hoped to do yesterday. So here we go…

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Get Real

January 31, 2013 Leave a comment

Okay. This is where this blog takes form. It would be really fucking boring if I only wrote about my good days. Yesterday was awesome. Well, it was up until my last post which I wrote at the Bad Waitress, a cafe restaurant where my best friend works. They have wi-fi, really good food and beer. I expect many posts will be written from there. Oh, and when I checked in there I became mayor on Foursquare! So yeah, really good day up until that point. My BFF even bought me a beer so totally fucking kick ass!

Except it’s Minneapolis and fucking cold as hell and nothing stays kick-ass for long. My BFF got off work while I was there so I offered to drive her home. I don’t drive often and love to help out a friend when I can. Did I mention it was fucking cold as hell out? Driving is no big deal, right? If you keep reading this blog you will learn about my philosophy on helping and how I think it’s easy and makes the world a better place and that if you are a selfish mother fucker like me you should do it every chance you get.

Turns out my BFF needs cat food too. She doesn’t drive so we have a great opportunity for her to make use of my generosity and have me drive out to Chuck and Don’s in St. Louis Park. All went well for a total of about 10 blocks. Then we ran into a power outage. Not my van. It is thankfully running just fine. No, the goddamn city was in the black. I really have no idea what caused it. I’m sure I will find out. I figure it has something to do with the weather. It dropped 800 degrees in one day. But yeah, a huge swath of the city was without power. No street lights, no stop lights, backed up traffic and no power at the pet store. We spent an hour driving in the dark to accomplish nothing.

Well, once we got back to civilization we did stop by the liquor store and my BFF stocked up on beer so I guess I made some use of the drive. And after all that I figured it would be appropriate to stop in for a quick one. So for the record, this paragraph goes in the good column.

[Got coffee so hopefully I can keep writing]

So now I’m running late for rehearsal. My band leader is always running late so that probably means I’m right on time. Which I am. I get to the studio and Venus is unloading her car. Perfect timing. A good quality in a bass player I say. We get in and get everything set up but still no drummer. We were actually suppose to rehearse the day before but our drummer had apparently got assaulted and slipped on the ice and broke his rib and couldn’t make it. I don’t know exactly what happened. I’m hearing it second hand but I think he should have a blog. Sounds like his life is way more exciting than mine. Anyway, he’s in pain and totally spaced that we are rehearsing. Venus tells him to skip it and we rehearse without him. We are the ones who need it anyway. I don’t understand it. Our drummer always seems to do fine but I suck if I don’t rehearse. Venus sucks without rehearsal. The drummer has just got it but he has other issues. Just saying.

I kind of like rehearsing without a drummer. I wouldn’t say I prefer it. I really prefer having a drummer. Drums are important but there are benefits to not having him there. For starters, I can hear myself. Drums are fucking loud! With a drummer you have to turn up so loud that it’s hard to hear anything. Okay, that is the only benefit. Other that being able to play at a lower volume and hear myself it really sucked not having him there. But rehearsal went fine and we got a kick-ass set put together for our show in Scottsdale, AZ. I guess our studio party on Saturday will be our full band live rehearsal. Damn I’m glad we are professionals. Don’t know how we pull this shit off.

So yesterday was a long day. The kind of day that does me in. The kind of day that doesn’t end. And it didn’t. It kept going. Oh yeah, there is more excitement to come. I left rehearsal wanting nothing more that to get home, have a beer and curl up in my nice warm bed with my kitty cat. Well, that’s not what happened. I get in my van and drive home. I’m listening to Minnesota Public Radio as I often do. I’m a sustaining member. I’m listening to As It Happens and they have a story about this guy, Aiman Youssef of Staton Island, NY who lost everything in Super Storm Sandy. Now he has a tent set up in front of what used to be his house and has spent every day since the storm helping his neighbors. It choked me up. It’s sad, but the best of humanity seems to come out of the worst of situations.

So I’m driving, I’m emotionally engaged, I’m tired and basically on auto-pilot. I pull up to a stop sign before making a left-hand turn not noticing the cop car I just cut off until the lights start flashing in my rear-view mirror. I pull over wondering, “What the fuck did I do?”. And I bet you are wondering, “OMG, how drunk is he?”. Nope, two beers at the restaurant, one at my friends, all many hours ago – I’m sober, just tired and distracted. I take drinking and driving very seriously. I lost an eye that way when I was 21. I consider myself lucky. It’s nothing to fuck around with. I got lucky this time too. The cop just ran my license and let me go after I apologized profusely. I’ve actually had really good experiences with the Minneapolis Police department. Probably helps that I’m a white guy but who knows? Maybe it’s the mini-van with LEFREAK plates.

I get home and it’s time for a beer. Well, a beer and a whiskey. I’ve discovered that I can drink cheap beer if it’s coupled with cheap whiskey. I crawl into bed. It’s been a good day. I watch the Daily Show, make a post on Facebook, comment on a friends post and I’m ready to be done. But no, my friend realizing I’m awake sends me a text, “Can I call u?”. I respond, “No” because I’m a dick like that. Then I called her. We talk from 2am until 4am. I had more beers and more whiskey. I don’t remember everything we talked about but I do remember telling her about how she hurt me years back when we first met. We bonded instantly. I guess it’s one of those things that happens when a real, genuine, honest person meets one of their own. And there was attraction. There was chemistry. To put it bluntly, I wanted to bang her. I wanted to be her friend and I wanted to have sex with her and I even considered being her boyfriend. But that’s not me and she knew it and she moved on leaving me in the dust. Yeah, it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing for her and the time and it was probably the right thing for me but it still hurt. In this life you don’t meet that many people with whom who can really connect on that level and they are not to be taken for granted. But hey, she’s back in my life and all is good. In fact I just got a call from her reminding me that I agreed to meet her and that she has chowder for me. Awesome! I have no food so this is really good.

But my big fuck up of the day was over-sleeping. I left my phone downstairs so I didn’t wake up when Home Service Plus called at 7:44am. They were coming out to fix my washing machine which is leaking and my stove which won’t light. Yup, totally missed that. I’ve been dealing with these problems for a while because I just can’t get my shit together to remedy them. Guess I’m going to be dealing with them a little while longer. It’s all about time. Time fucking fascinates me.

And now it’s time for me to go get me some chowder!

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