But the youngest child left the culdesac and pushed his cart into the busy street that crosses out front.
We all watched, dumbfounded. I ran over, grabbed the kid, and carried him back to the building he lives in. Halfway across the lawn, his mother comes out.
I'm still rattled. One of these days a child is going to get hurt badly on this street, and the parents are going to blame the driver, even though they let their kids play on the street all the time.
</rant>
My boss is still giving me the silent treatment. I am divided inside as to whether I really care or not. He doesn't have the respect of anyone else in the company, he isn't in a position to fire me, he doesn't know his job, not to mention mine....so I am in a position of strength. However, I just want to get my work done....not play politics.
Time to get some shut eye.
Dee's at work right now. That seems to be the way of things lately, always somewhere. A couple weeks ago I was really hurting when I thought of her. Last week, I was just calm. Now I just feel a little sad at the loss, at the separation. She has a whole 'nother world and life separate from me an mine. And, sometimes loving her is like watching a drama on tv. It is well written and the characters are all interesting and well acted. You cry at the sad parts, and laugh at the funny, but no matter what, you won't be seeing any of them any time soon.
I am somehow viewer and participant in this life of hers, thankful for the part I play, but wishing the writers would put me in more scenes.
Three little words from her can bring me smiles for the rest of the day. A chat with her makes work pass so much faster. But words on a screen, voices over wires, these things can only go so far. Why is it that a physical distance can make such a difference? Is it the looks she gives me? Is it my hunger for physical contact? Maybe hearing her ramble on about her life...Why, when I can feel her thoughts and emotions from here, why does being close to her mean so much?
What magic lies in the closeness of a lover? What inherent need is filled by their presence? And how long can a person survive its offering along with its absence? One year, two? Only time will tell.
i got the call a little before midnight, new york time. he had just suffered a heart attack, his second.
we were loading up the car when the real call came.
by the time we got to the house, the ambulances were already there, and the cops were trying to perform CPR.
i went into the livingroom. he was lying on the floor there. all ther furniture had been moved.
all the family that could be assembled made their way to the hospital, where he was officially pronounced dead.
i'm still kind of in shock. some people just aren't supposed to die.
i can barely believe i'm noding right now. but i need something to do, some way to get this off my chest.
he taught me so much.
he took me on my first subway ride when i was 5.
oh my god, i'm pipe linking.
he gave me money to repair my uncle's old drum set. he set up an amp in the basement so i could learn to play bass. he taught me how to rewire my guitars and my house. we made drumsticks out of old dowels on his belt sander.
when my parents divorced, he let his son-in-law stay in the house until i went to college. when i came back for the summers, he let me stay for free and even lent me his car.
he was a stubborn old sicilian bastard, and that's what killed him, at least in part.
he was diabetic but didn't care.
sunday night, he was eating clams and candy and chocolate pudding.
and now he's gone.
and the fucking pudding is still in the fucking refrigerator.
and it's 4:00 in the fucking morning and everyone i know is asleep and with their parents right now so i can't even call them.
my mom is staying at my grandmother's, my love is down on the farm this week.
and he never even met his great-grandson.. he asked about him all the time, but never got to meet him.
my grandparents celebrated 50 years of marriage in January. we made a collage of pictures from their life.
i stared at it for a while when i was at the house.
i have a picture here that i took back. he's holding me in his chair; i must have been two or three.
i can still smell the old, cracked leather of that chair.
he lived a full life, at least.
he was a printer most of his life. i found a letter from his union promoting him to supervisor in 1959.
i remember sitting on huge stacks of paper in the printing room of the school of visual arts, where he was the head printer until the diabetes affected his legs.
his brother Angelo died when he was a kid; he was hit by a car.
his brother Joe died recently, of cancer.
at least he knows i love him; that we all love him. he was never shy about telling us that.
i think that's the last thing i ever said to him...
My day inadvertantly started at 4am today.
Wow. It's 4 in the morning, and I just woke up. What the -- Holy Crap, I'm really thirsty!
I woke up at 4:02am this morning, and was extremely thirsty. I had nothing in the house as I am keeping supplies to a minimum in preparation for my move at the end of the month. So not having anything handy to drink, and being thirsty, I did what anyone in my position would do.
I went to the store.
What the hell? It's 4 in the morning, and you're cruising to the fucking grocery store? What are you, sick? Go back to bed!
I bought two gallons of water, a gallon of apple juice, milk, and a box of cereal. Went home, opened the water jug and poured myself a glass of warm water. Drank the water, put everything in the refrigerator, took a quick trip to the bathroom, and started to go back to bed.
Okay. You got your drink. You had a bad weekend, a long day yesterday, and you can use the sleep. Go to bed.
Then I decided I needed to hit the internet.
Wait a minute. What the fuck is wrong with you? First you go to the store to get something to drink, and now you're getting on the internet? HEY. IDIOT. STOP THAT.
I went to MSN and read an interview with 'The Rock'. Then I head over to E2 and check out the cool picks, and new nodes. Then I decide I need to write about my early-morning experience in the daylog.
Oh, wonderful. Not only did you do all of this crazy shit, now you're writing about it. You know, you really should be sleeping by now.
As a side note, I never really got back to sleep. I just kind of rolled around for a few hours.
I've been sick with a rotten head cold, sinus infection, whatever. Feeling no energy, no life in me. All of my projects, fun and boring, have been pushed back, postponed, what a fscking drag. My art car only exists in my mind right now. I'm really angry about being sick for so long.
And M. and I made a final break up kind of thing. We have been dancing around this relationship for so long, it never feels right to me, I just feel guilty all the time! So he suggested that we take a month off, I (and he of course, though he won't) can see whomever I want, male or female, dog or cat, do whatever I want.
When he first suggested it, by e-mail (told him not to discuss important things over e-mail but he can't help himself, so impatient) the first thing I felt was instant relief. We talked about it a few days later, and it feels so good, I have called him more just to say hi than I have in a month! I have a feeling it's over for good, though. Everything is so intertwined, my concerns for his problems, my traumatic transference, I just don't think we'll ever be more than friends again.
I don't really know of course.
My "raison d'etre ici" is relaxation. I need to relax. I just finished working on my contribution to the final group project for cognitive neuroscience and I am about to start working on my German portfolio, but I need a few minutes to breathe. I can't allow myself to leave my computer, though, so I end up browsing the internet.
It's been a long day. I stayed up till 6 AM to work on this project, but I only managed to write a few lines. My drowsy thoughts kept drifting away to things that do matter to me. As I was trying to make sense of everything, a writeup was created and I tried to follow how it got evaluated. I'm a newbie here and not sure about what is good and what is not. So I was quite disappointed when it received 3 downvotes immediately, but luckily someone cooled it later. All in all I think about 20 people cast a vote on it, but it still has 0 Rep because they can't seem to agree on whether it's cool or not. Later I met my new mentor, he's a Scot, I think, and he seems nice.
Then I got up at ten, after 4 hours of restless sleep. Daniel presented our paper in class, with his funny Hungarian accent. Our research proposal was so complicated that even the professor didn't get it. I tried to sneak out during the break, but ended up talking to Max, a read-haired Canadian with dreadlocks and sandals. He was working for ICT on a programme that could calculate the chance of getting a cold for males and females and the effect this had on the probablity of their respective sneezing. When I went back to get my stuff, my professor was already in the classroom, so I had to stay.
It's been a couple of busy days, the last couple of days. I'm counting them. I'm even counting hours. About 4 more hours and it's Wednesday (here in Holland, that is). Friday is the last day, the amount of work that is to be finished before then seems an almost impossible lot, but after that I can leave this place behind and move on. I know how much this College with its campus mean to me and how much I will miss it. Still, right now all I want to do is get it over with.
I woke up this morning still snickering over a comment from one of my housemates over dinner last night. What she said was, "I think you'd make a great parking analyst." It makes no sense to me either. Maybe it was a dream.
(another edition of Irregular Zymurgy)
This is my week off from brewing beer. My wheat ale with cloves and cinnamon is sitting in bottles as we wait for it to carbonate and settle. One more week before it will be ready to taste.
One of my housemates brewed a porter with coffee and chocolate. During its first few days of fermentation, the surface of the wort, as the carbon dioxide percolated through the cocoa butter, looked like Solaris. Last night he transferred the young beer to a clean carbouy, leaving the precipitated grain bits and the oily residues in the former. Another four days until it goes into bottles.
We found a recipe for an herbal root beer in the back of a brewing book. Next week, this will become the basis for a real beer with root beer flavors, something I tried with only moderate success last summer.
Beer, beer, beer. I had not taken such an interest in it until I moved back to California. It must be a sort of last hurrah, since any year now I expect my metabolism to come to a full stop, at which time I'll have to stop drinking beer and start exercising.
On this fine morning I woke up at about 8:30 and decided to skip the day's classes and go to Austin with my best friend so she could finish up her business at UT.
We drove up there (from San Antonio) and got through downtown traffic to go to lunch at a place called Kirbey Lane. It was your stereotypical vegan-friendly Austin restaraunt. She had Migas with tofu as a substitute for egg. The variety of foods that you can substitute with soy or tofu never ceases to amaze me.
We then proceeded to go to her new apartment complex to sign her lease for the summer. When I went back to the car afterwards, there was a shifty looking man who looked at me suspiciously, then jumped in to one of the dumpsters nearby. This puzzled me a bit. Was he looking for something or just trying to get away from the impending company of a stranger? I shall never know. He jumped back out as we were driving off. Makes you wonder...
She went to the student co-op place that buys back books. She got her money, then we proceeded to drive back to San Antonio.
On the way, a good song came on the radio and we started grooving out in her car. This means waving our hands and bobbing our heads in strange manners which make passing cars speed up to get away from us. There was only one guy who had the good sense to appreciate the comic relief we offered on the long drive.
Today me and my friend skipped first period to go swimming in icy cold water and also to purchase the new Toolcd Lateralus great cd by the way. We got to the mall at about 9:20 and waited for a another 20 minutes for Sam Goody to open. We went in, purchased it first ones to buy that particular cd in the RGV and walked out. All day I listened to that cd.
I got home that night at about 10:20 and started burning some cds. I burned about 21 cds last night on 2 4x burners. It felt like forver. I couldn't stand waiting so I got online while I was burning the cds. I talked to a buddy of mine online and continued burning the cds. At about 1 A.M. a friend of mine starts banging on my window. I let him inside and he started telling me about the pot he gave me. It is the equivalent to what was referred to as Sister G-14 in American Beauty. Strong shit. He started showing me scars he had from the hallucinations. Awed me.
I then fell asleep at my comp after he left and woke up an hour later to see that the lights were off. Turns out my father had entered and churned them off.
What a day wouldn't you say?
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