Expenses Without Receipts

Starting from Wednesday, May 17:

• OK, we're going back to Monday, May 15, where, after a long day at work, I decided on the fly to hit this basement hotel bar called Constantine for a second and presumably final time before it closes (no hard feelings; there's a new management company and apparently they want a new concept for it and Monello, the ground-level restaurant on top of Constantine) at the end of the month.  I have been mentally mapping out my evenings for the next couple weeks before my parents come home, and I've been stressing that I would not be able to go back to this place and its dark and funky vibe before it's gone forever.  Thankfully, as bad as work was that day, I was able to get out before I stayed too late as compared to other dates.  Anyway, I'm not doing an EWR on Constantine because I used my credit card.  I am doing an EWR for Caffetto, the coffeeshop I like to frequent because, unlike with Constantine (which I went to before Caffetto), I had planned to go to Caffetto to work on my receipts.  Chocolate cake, small hot chocolate, and tip comes out to: $9.32.
• Back to Thursday the 4th, where I went to Hooters for lunch.  This was the week where I filled in second shift and I had a May coupon, and this date felt like the perfect time to use it (even though I found myself at Hooters the first day of the NFL Draft, so in retrospect I maybe didn't have to go there on this date at all).  Had a Jedi Juice instead of my usual Angry Orchard -- May the 4th be with you -- get it?  Plus tip: $24.
• While I knew and planned about Hooters in advance, I only was told about this stripper party the week of.  I didn't know if I could squeeze both in, but I needed to get my fuck on so bad that I made the trek from the Mall Of America to North Minneapolis.  There I was greeted by *****y and *****y, both of whom I had once gotten a tandem dance from a house party close to my house.  There, I whipped it out and both women looked at me luck I had a mushroom for a dick.  (Since then, *****y has warmed to me to the point where she gives me handjobs.)  This time around, they were both, uh, more handsy.  Maybe they are just going by house rules.  At any rate, even though I didn't cum much, I came.  Both beautiful women don't mess around; they jacked me off as though they were angry with me, and I couldn't have been happier.  Now, I didn't really appreciate both of them taking all the money I had taken out of my wallet out of my hands, but doing mental math after eating at Hooters, I don't think they ripped me off.  I didn't come in to the party with enough money for a proper door fee for the guy who's hosting, so I owe him ten bucks the next time I see him.  Total: $210.
• To Monday the 1st ... went to Great Clips to get my hair cut.  Guess I could've waited, but I had my day free, so I thought it was a good time to get it out of the way before I get too annoyed with what's on top of my head.  The girl who cut me was Asian, so when she talked about my "Asian afro," she seemed to know me better than I did.  I mean, "Asian afro" is a perfect way to describe my hair once it gets long!  But as soon as I paid, she shut down as if I was physically in her way.  I would've taken a buck off your tip if I knew you were gonna be like that.  But I didn't.  Have the receipt, BTW, so this EWR is just for tip: $5.
• OK, back to Saturday, April 29, where there was this food truck festival that seemed cool, plus I didn't have much else to do, so why not enjoy a day being alive?  The weather, unfortunately, was unsettled; I went into my car once to avoid the hit-and-miss rain.  Thank goodness the food trucks circled the wagons around one end of a parking lot, the rest of which was parking for us festivalgoers.  After seeing which places did have lines and targeting the ones that didn't, I started off at Sweet Taste Of Italy, where I got its Ken's Club.  Plus tip: $15.
• Then, for dessert, I went to Pretty Great Cheesecake.  Had its key lime.  Man, I'm always down for some key lime.  Plus tip: $11.
• Wednesday, April 26 -- this was the day I took off to bring my car in for service.  What I thought could have been an all-day repair took only a few hours.  That gave me time to get my face shaved at Moler.  With tip: $13.
• After that I went to the Black Hart, the only combination soccer pub and drag burlesque place in the world, I think.  It is serendipity that I took a day off on the same day that one of the most anticipated Matches in English Premier League history, first-place Arsenal at second-place Manchester City, took place.  Glad to have a free afternoon to watch this with my people.  The Game itself was a rout; Man City crushed the Gunners, 4-1, and finally it looked as though the pre-season prognostications from many people who said the Cityzens were going to win the league this year were going to be proven right.  I was thirsty as hell, so I got me a Coke to go along with a Bloody Mary (with beer chaser, of course).  Plus tip and it came out to: $10.
• Finally, on Thursday, April 13, I went to the classic movie theater close to me to partake in that theater's Hitchcock Festival.  They were showing Rebecca, the only Hitch-directed film to ever win the Oscar for Best Picture.  It is not the psychosexual or action-packed thrillers like Vertigo or North By Northwest are, so I can't say I loved the movie, but I appreciate finally seeing it.  (A long time ago, Entertainment Weekly came up with a list of 100 films every film buff should see before he or she dies; Rebecca is one of them, and I'm glad I can cross that off my list ... as soon as I can find that list.)  The problem was that everybody seemed to have caught wind of the Hitchcock Festival; I had to wait in the lobby before the ushers and manager decided there were enough seats for all of us on the waiting list to get in.  Never seen that before at this theater.  Anyway, cost of the ticket and to tip the organist who played before the show equaled: $13.

Good through May 17.

RIP, Entertainment Weekly

I've been sitting on this news for some time, hoping I would give myself the time to write a proper, and long, obituary about it.  That's not gonna happen -- not only am I too rushed to ever do something that proper and long, but no matter how much I write, I probably won't do my relationship with the magazine justice.

About two months ago, I saw on Twitter that Entertainment Weekly would cease its print publication, becoming exclusively online.  I had been a subscriber (although I probably let it lapse for a month or so around the turn of the millennium) since Issue #10, which I believe had on the cover Bernadette Peters and, of all people, Kevin Spacey as Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker in the made-for-TV biopic Fall From Grace.  I was interested in the magazine as it was being rolled out because I loved all things entertainment and celebrity; it was a small factor as to why I went out to college in Los Angeles.  But I was a kid back in 1990, and I had no money to buy a subscription.  I remember my brother and I did a really stupid thing several years before that and subscribed to Sports Illustrated not knowing that, you know, we needed to pay the magazine money.  We finally confessed to Father about our mistake, and he somehow got SI to cancel the subscription.

That bad memory didn't seem to deter Father from cajoling me into subscribing, on his dime, EW after I had indicated I wouldn't mind reading the magazine.  (Have I blog posted about this before?)  I said no, he said why not ... he wouldn't fuckin' stop.  The reason he was so damn relentless was because he wanted to enter Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, and either you needed to subscribe to a magazine or he thought you needed to subscribe in order to get a chance to win.  He can't read English, so used me as the way to get a subscription in order to enter the sweepstakes.

He didn't win, of course, but I got to read Entertainment Weekly, and frankly, I loved it.  The mag was informative, fun, and taught me a lot about both the entertainment industry and about writing.  I would spend a good hour or so reading it the afternoon I got it from the mail.  And, with some possible exceptions (a few issues may have been tossed as I laid them in the communal bathroom of my dorm floor), I would never, ever throw it away.  It just never occurred to me to toss them.  I bought them; why would I throw my EWs away?

Soon, the piles of magazines grew and grew, and so I had to find a box, and then a bigger box, and then two boxes, and so on, just so I could store them all.  In the meantime I got busy and so I couldn't read as much or as long as I used to.  Then, much of television entertainment shifted to cable, then satellite, then streaming, all three vehicles that I could not afford to spend money on, which made much of what the magazine covered foreign to me.  And all the while magazine publishing industry had taken (and continues to take) a massive hit thanks to the Internet, so EW would publish more "double issues" spanning this and next week.  Finally, about two-and-a-half years ago, the publisher said that Entertainment Weekly would become a monthly.  The logo still had "WEEKLY" watermarked on the bigger typeface of "ENTERTAINMENT" ever since August 2019, but there was so much equity to the name "Entertainment Weekly" that it wouldn't make sense if it re-named itself Entertainment Monthly.  With that drop in frequency, however, the news and reviews of movies and albums were too stale for me to read and care about.  They became less journalism to read through then, well, collector's items.

And collect I have.  I think I should have about 1,600 issues.  I've been chronicling my mostly half-ass efforts to store each issue in a protective bag, then file those issues away in boxes until I've done all of them.  I have about five boxes filled, which of course barely makes a dent in my stash.  All the rest of the EWs are in my storage unit, divvied up in paper bags stacked on top of each other amidst all the sports programs, old copies of City Pages and The Onion, and souvenir cups I've collected.  Still, it's my goal to preserve them all.  To what end?  Who knows.  If I die with all of them sealed, someone might just throw them all away.  But hey, I blame My Father.

Anyway -- and have I blog posted about this already? -- when the news came that Entertainment Weekly was going to cease print publication (the last issue was dated April 2022 but released last month), while I was sad, I was also relieved.  Since my joy of getting to read the journalism in an issue had devolved into feeling obligated to encase that tangible issue in PVC plastic, my main concern with the mag had become finding the time and the means to store them all.  It never felt as though I was catching up with these unsealed issues continuing to pile up.  I had wondered, considering the slow death of the industry, that the parent company of EW might one day stop printing print issues.  Since it has, that means there will not be a pile-up of new editions anymore.  There is now a set, uh, blob of issues I need to tackle, a blob that thank Buddha will not be able to metastasize anymore.  I now have a chance to finish what could be my life's work, as pathetic as that may sound.

And then I get sad again.  Entertainment Weekly has been a part of my life since 1990.  It had a good run, but I and we as a culture should always be sad at the death of a magazine publication.  It was a source of information that, well, entertained people, and that should never have a shelf life.  Also, as shady as the start of my relationship with it was -- seriously, if Father never pushed me to say yes to subscribing, I never would have, as curious as I would have been to read it back when I was a child -- it was a connection to my life when I was younger, when times were easier, and when I didn't have to worry about things such as breaking down and dying.

Well, EW just broke down and died.  And while I might be happy that I can see an end to packing up each and every individual issue I have, when I tape up that last loose edition and put it into a box, I'll be doing the same for the memories of my youth.

RIP, Entertainment Weekly.

Gotta Get Around To, You Know, My Stuff

When my parents left for the winter, I once again had the space and the time to take all my stuff from my storage unit, sift through them, read the magazines and newspapers I have kept all these years so that I would one day read them, put copies of Entertainment Weekly and programs for sporting events in their separate bags, and finally throw as much of the crap I have away.

Well, we're coming up on seven weeks and I haven't done jack.  Well, let me take that back -- I read the first thing I put in my bags of stuff, a copy of the late, lamented Star Tribune-created alternative weekly Vita.MN (which was put down when the Strib but the standard-bearing alternative weekly City Pages ... which was also put down by the Strib last year, presumably because of the pandemic), uh, just last night.  The cover story was that year's South By Southwest.  It was from March of 2011.  Yep, almost eleven years I kept it.  It's now in the recycling bag, but a part of me wonders if it's worth something.  Nah.

I have dozens of bags of that.  Dozens.  I am so overwhelmed that I should just chuck it in the recycling bin.  But, goddammit, I made a promise to myself that each one of these pieces of ... stuff has something worth reading at least once, even if the information on it is more than a decade old.  So I soldier on.  No, that's not true; I continue to possess them in the increasingly vain hopes that I will pay proper attention to each piece and in good faith read and consider them before either keeping it for posterity's sake or finally disposing of them.  There's just so many that it's intimidating and that's why I've barely started, that's all.

Called Mother last night.  Wanted to slightly and calmly act as if things are back to normal after The Mechanic Around The Corner ratted me out to them about their minivan.  See, the garbage wasn't picked up yesterday morning, and although they came around in the evening (possibly while I took a nap after work, and picking up more liquor, and eating at Jersey Mike's), I took the opportunity to reach out to my folks by asking if our trash is still picked up on Thursdays.  Anyway, after Mother said that it was, we moved on quickly to other things.  I thought that they told me they were coming home.  I almost had a heart attack.  But I misunderstood what they were saying.  They actually are in Utah for the time being, but will be back in Las Vegas in several days.  Good thing, because I still have a bunch of my stuff that I, well, intend to get around to, and that's not even counting all of my crap that is piling up in my storage unit.

I have other thoughts as to what I'm doing instead of going through my stuff, and what those opportunity costs show what I value.  Maybe I'll put that in another blog post.  Let's just say that it's high time I get around to going through my stuff.

Fucking Father Threw My Fucking Stuff Away

Oh, I'm so pissed off at him right now.

First time in a long time he pulled this shit.  I thought we were doing good.  But he had to fuckin' throw that away, literally.

OK, so I wanted to put some topical on the acne in the back of my head; maybe I'll talk about it some other time.  I had a bag of cotton balls that I took from the closet in my bathroom and threw on the floor.  I left the bag there because I know where it is.  But it wasn't there.  I suspected My Father, who went through and cleaned my bedroom, took it and put it back because he deemed such a task his birthright.

So I go to the bathroom and open the closet.  I see the cotton balls.  I also see everything organized.  That would be great ... except for one thing.  I frequently throw my reading material -- Entertainment Weekly, City Pages, etc. -- in the shelf where the towels are.  The towels are there, neatly folded.  Those magazines are not.  And that fucking pisses me off because My Fucking Father has gone back to his stealing, entitled fucking ways and threw away my shit that he had no goddamn right to throw away.

Problem is, I don't know where it is right now.  I don't know when he cleaned it.  If it was before Thursday, and he wanted to be cruel enough to throw all those things in the trash instead of the recycling bin (which is picked up biweekly, not weekly), they're all gone.  If not, I need to check both the trash bin and the recycling bin and, I swear to fucking God, I am going to take all those magazines out and put them in my storage unit, where it'll be safe from the evil clutches of My Fucking Father.  I don't know how I'm going to do it surreptitiously, but I figure I'll just fucking lie to my parents about "doing something back at work," and, either before I leave or after I come back, fucking open those bins in the middle of the night and the cold and search for my shit.  If that motherfucker doesn't think I will do it, he has no goddamn idea that I care more about those things than even him right now.  I'll open trash to find them, and he can fuckin' try me on that if he thinks I'm bullshittin'.

And in the meantime I'm going to go through the recycling bag out in the kitchen to see if my stuff is still there.  Save me a trip if I get lucky.  And I need to wash my hands anyway; why can't I get a little dirtier?  Have to learn how to roll in the mud with My Fucking Father.

Even More Overwhelmed

Putting my shit into (or back into) storage is going to take all week.  Such is the magnitude of my stuff.

I started after coming home today.  Sunday I bought a huge tote that I could easily carry my shit in.  Well, I could only fit in three bags' worth of magazines and mail; a fourth would have made it impossible to lift.  I was able to get that thrown into storage tonight, as well as the clear tote that I've decided most of my sundry items such as beer cozies and souvenir sports cups will be placed in.

Still, I have several other bags of stuff that I'll have to take into storage, although most of them will be half-empty because I've started organizing them into "mail," "sports programs," and "Vikings stuff."  And then I have other boxes I think I'll stash in there.  Oh, and I'm finally going to go hard and seal up some Entertainment Weeklys, which was the original point in having a storage unit.  But that will probably mean I will have to take one full box and throw it into storage.  I bought from Amazon more empty boxes, and I think I'll have to open it up to assemble and use one, but for the other unassembled boxes I'll ... have to throw them in storage, too.

Glad I have until Friday.  This is a multi-day chore.

Overwhelmed

My parents come home in five or six days.  It feels like an eternity, to be quite honest, but today was the first time I felt so overwhelmed in trying to get the house tidied up and to ship all my stuff back out to storage.  There are just so much shit that I haven't gotten around to that several days won't be enough for me to deal with it all.  I mean, not only do I have bags from storage I'm still trying to get through, not only do I have bags of auto show brochures I haven't even touched, but the mail I have accumulated -- not just the past 3 1/2 months when my parents were away, but before that too -- is piled up so much that I can't even start.

That's why I think I'm just going to cut my losses right now.  Tomorrow, after work, I'm just going to throw all this shit in bags, willy-nilly.  I might throw those bags into storage.  Meanwhile, I'm going to buy a storage crate to throw sundry stuff -- I have cups and programs and other ... things -- that I want to save but I think can be separated into a different container.  I have no idea whether or not it'll fit into my storage unit, but I think it's a worthwhile investment nonetheless.

Then, if, at the very least, I have all the stuff I'm sending into storage in bags or containers, maybe then I'll calm down and realize that I still have time to go through and read all the City Pages and tape up all the Entertainment Weeklys.  If I'm tired, the thinking goes, I can just toss those bags into my car and drive to the unit.  That's the state I need to get to, ASAP.  But, I have to admit that this is not the first time I'm overwhelmed and not understanding how much more stuff I have accumulated over the years.

Yeah, I'll Never Get It Done

Two weeks left.  Less than, even.  I have ... let's see ... four bags of stuff I brought home from storage, plus another bag from the auto show (the 2012 Auto Show, and there are more of those bags in my closet).  I want to go through them, take out all the EWs, sort out any sports programs in them, and then read and recycle the rest.

Have I gotten through them all?  What do you think?

Look, I'm trying.  But ... it's difficult.  I read one City Pages from, like, 2011 and I get all nostalgic.  Meanwhile I want to exercise, like I will do after I blog post this and masturbate.

I'll never get it done.  In fact I'll be packing more stuff back into storage in no time.

NyQuil Is A Mother

Not that I needed it, I just want to use it all before the folks return (shudder), but last night I took another swig of NyQuil.  Probably have two more gulps to go.  It'll be something, because, of all the times I've taken it before, when I was ill or not, I woke up like I was hung over.  And I have never been hung over.

Took it around ... 1?  Midnight?  I then actually stayed up to start taping up my Entertainment Weeklys.  I felt good.  Active, even.  I then started to get drowsy, either because of the NyQuil or because my body was shutting down, and after looking through my health care directive, I went to bed around 2:30.

My alarm woke me up at 9.  And I was tired.  And, my head felt like I had a head cold.  I thought NyQuil was supposed to fix head colds ... and I didn't have a head cold when I drank it last night.  And until, oh, I got out of work around 2:30, there was a mass in the middle of my head and I was groggy all afternoon.

Was I sick?  Was it the NyQuil?  Was I just tired?  I feel good now, but I actually took a quick nap not too long ago, so ... I don't know what it was.  I know I'll have to drink some more to empty the bottle, and I'm kind of wary what it'll do to me the next time.

Maintaining, Not Gaining

Fell asleep at 12:30 or thereabouts, but woke up a bit past 6, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Don't have to go to work until 10, so that left me with a chance to do some chores before taking another crack at unconsciousness.

What did I do?  Well, I cleaned the rest of the dishes and then, despite not knowing whether it's too much or too late, I watered the plants for the first time in 72 hours.  I then polished off last year's "Comics" issue from City Pages.  Oh, and I'm blogging for the day.

And that is going to be the problem as I prepare for the return of my parents in, eek, less than three weeks.  Yes, the dishes need to be cleaned and the plants need to be watered (well, maybe, but work with me here).  But what I really wanted to do, and what I have always wanted to do while my parents are away, is to start focusing on the "long-term" stuff.  And that stuff usually relates to, well, my stuff.  I had hoped I could haul some of my shit out of storage.  If there are old copies of City Pages, I would read them and, hopefully, recycle them.  There are old Entertainment Weeklys, and I want to seal them up for storage.  I have sports programs I want to organize, etc.

In the meantime, I have a lot of things at home.  There are papers on my dresser and desk I really want to go through.  There are, get this, old brochures from past car shows that I tucked into my closet; I have so many of them, in reusable bags, that I should take care of them, too.  Finally, I see some old clothes that I could donate to Goodwill.  If I have the chance to them, I should.

But notice that when it comes to those "long-term" chores, I only went through one six-month-old CP.  The other stuff I did is normal, day-to-day or week-to-week stuff.  That's maintenance.  That's not getting ahead of things.  And I don't know if I'll have the time to do some large structural moves and shovel papers into the recycling bin or store them neatly in my storage unit before my folks come back.  And if I can't do it by now, when will I ever have the time?

I'm getting depressed.  I should take a nap now.

Last Sunday I Accomplished Something I'm Actually Proud Of

To prepare for my parents coming home, I gathered all the papers and Entertainment Weeklys I've accumulated and put them in bags in order to store them.  But when I got to my storage unit, I couldn't lift open the front door.  I went back another day, but it was still shut.

I figured that the cold weather managed to freeze the snow that accumulated around the corrugated metal door around the creases and ridges.  So after using this salt solution My Father gave me to melt the ice on my windshield and chip-chip-chipping away at the ice around the edge of the door and still not moving anything, I asked for help with the storage unit manager -- for the door as well as for my lock, which was not moving after spending a whole winter outside.  She called her husband; he said to use WD-40 on the lock (it worked!) and that he'll look into my door.

A couple hours later, I got a call.  It was frozen, all right -- really frozen.  He had to use a chisel and crowbar, I think, to open it up.  And there was ice keeping the door stuck shut -- a lot of ice.  He warned me that it would startle me.  And when I immediately drove back to my unit and met up with him, I opened up my door to see a solid ... glacier of ice, beginning from the threshold of my door, disappearing underneath the bags and boxes that obscure my view of the unit floor.  I didn't really care about the ice, to be honest with you.  I was more than content just to keep it and wait for the spring and summer to melt the ice.  But the husband/co-manager was worried about the structure of the unit and whether this ice has seeped into the unit next to mine, so he asked me to move all of my stuff (or at least all the stuff I could move; I have bags and boxes I put on the floor and I was sure they are encased in the ice) into this unused unit which, even though he cautioned me was not climate-controlled, is accessible only after going into a hallway.

---

I had to do this the following week because I didn't have time.  That was last weekend, after my folks came home.  I swore to them I would come in first thing Saturday morning, once they opened up their office, but it snowed that morning and my folks went nuts and I had to shovel and plow, and so I was only there for about 90 minutes before I decided I wanted to go to the University of Minnesota baseball game.  Once I started putting the bags on the top of the pile of things that is taller than me into the shopping cart they provided, pulled it through the snow because the wheels couldn't roll because it gathered up too much snow, and tried to organize it in my new space, I realized that this wasn't going to be done in a mere 90 minutes, or even over a day.  The guy took pity on me; he gave me a second lock to use so I could lock the contents of both units that I had now been using.  I promised to come back the next day, Easter, but I didn't know after seeing the enormity of my stuff to tell him I would be able to finish and give him the keys to the new lock.

While I had some dreams of going to Hooters or visiting the museum for Easter, this needed to be done, and even though I gave myself another week, I figured I needed to do the rest of this over one day.  So, for Easter, as soon as I was ready to get up, I went back to the storage unit and dealt with my things.  Well, maybe "dealt" isn't the right word; I just moved my stuff from once place to the other.

I will say that the day of sun from Saturday to Sunday morning help immensely.  It melted the snow, so I had bare pavement to roll my cart back-and-forth -- massive help since pulling that cart on Saturday drained my energy.  And since no one came at all during the day, since it was Easter, I had the time and space to just do my thing.

I didn't just throw everything I had into my new unit.  I was able to set the bags and boxes all up and own the hallway.  I was able to measure how heavy the bags are by holding them.  I was able to find the sturdiest boxes to form as my base.  I moved around papers to fatten up boxes and I found space in other bags for papers in bags that were ripped.  And then I got to arranging the boxes at the bottom and then stacking up my things on top of them.  I wanted to leave a space just in front of the other side of the door so I could step into the bags on top of the pile, but the plastic bags had to take all of that.

Nevertheless, once I put the last of my things in, I took a step back and smiled.  After throwing away or taking home a few things, I was able to move and organize all of my things in a neat and tidy order.  I had layers and layers of bags probably sitting securely on top of boxes.  And even though the height of my things remains taller than me (the co-manager was going to give me a unit twice as long, but he said that over the week he needed to give it to another person), I was able to audit all the things I have in there, and a task that going in seemed impossible was now finished.

(By the way, there are, like, three bags and one box and several old bottles encased in a creeping glacier of ice I couldn't get out of my old unit.  I don't know how it got there or how it stayed there, but try as I might, I couldn't pull them out or chip the ice around it.  It actually looks kind of creepy, something I would see in Annihilation.  The guy will have to chisel them out.  Hopefully I'll find space for the rest of my things, too.)

I really didn't go through the bags, let alone sealed them in plastic (like I want to do with my EWs), put them into a single folder (like I want to do with my sports programs) or throw them away after reading them (like I want to do with everything else).  But I had passing thoughts that the stuff that I threw into my old unit first, the stuff that sat at the bottom of my space, I was introduced to again.  It was important to air those things out, look at them again, recognize that they exist still.  And so I have re-resolved to do something about them.  Maybe.  But at the very least I was able to move all my stuff from one place to another, and to put them in a neat order.  And, for the record, I did it all in 4:45, with an hourlong lunch inbetween.  And I got a free month out of this, too!  And, finally, I listened to my old iPod while sorting my things.  I haven't used that doohickey in years!

Now I'll go back to my storage space, open the door and have all the papers hit me in the face!

Less Than Two Weeks Before They Come Back, Which Means They're Already Here

In a sense, having this week and next week to get my affairs in order (or to hide them) in anticipation of my parents coming back home is a relief because it gives me time.  Then again, they've been gone for more than six weeks and there are a lot of things I could have done and didn't, such as seal up my Entertainment Weeklys or going through my papers.  At least I got my folks' stock purchase records complete; I'll have to devote some time on going to the library and completely typing those out.

It'll get done, somehow, because it has to.  But in worrying for, oh, the past week-and-a-half about them coming home and ruining all I got going on at the house makes me realize that, in a sense, they're already here, you know?  When I'm worried about what they'll think of all their mail on the table, or how I got this new stepladder I was given, or how clean my room should be, I'm not enjoying my time at home with them gone.  And if I'm so preoccupied with getting the house ready to make them happy -- well, really, how different is my life than what it is when they are actually back at home making my life miserable because of all my stuff around my room?  Does that make any sense?

It's kind of like (and I may totally get in trouble with this) a woman with a family history of breast cancer.  I have heard women who have undergone mastectomies preemptively because all the women in her family received and died from a very aggressive and malignant form of it.  I feel as though those women have been burdened by the fear of breast cancer, that they're afraid of getting it even though they may not even have it.  And this fear dominates their thoughts so much that, essentially, they already have breast cancer, you know?  They could not live their lives freely until they had an operation they felt totally unburdened them from this fear.  So long as one is living under this fear of getting cancer, how different is your life than if you actually did have cancer?

I'm seriously about this analogy.  And so me running around worried about what my parents think for the past ten days or so means that, heck, they're already home.  And that may be why I lollygagged so much as soon as my parents left on their trip.  It was only then, during those weeks, where I knew they wouldn't be home any time soon.  I believed then I was without fear, and therefore I was free from worry.

Those days are over now.

With Two Weeks Off, What To Do?

When I learned that I likely will have the rest of this week and all of next week off -- well, unemployed -- I wasn't as anxious as I usually am.  Maybe that's folly; after all, I need money, and beyond the paychecks I'm getting for working (more like showing up) last week and for the two Vikings games I worked, I have nothing else coming in.

However, this forced furlough gives me some time to do the things I should do and the things I want to do.  It helps tremendously that my folks aren't here, at least not yet.  Wth them gone I can putz around the house whenever I want and have the time and space to, for example, go through and throw my papers away, or maybe finally bag some of my Entertainment Weeklys for the first time in years.  I went into storage and pulled out two bags; if I'm enterprising enough, I'll actually go through both of them.

And yet there are a lot of things I want to do that's pulling me out of the house.  Having no work means I can see my shrink.  I'm taking in an interview Thursday morning, even though it's not going to amount to much, seeing as I have a job (on a temporary basis, at least) in two weeks.  I have time to exercise.  I have time to go to my ladies and have sex with them.  I have time to throw away, if I want to, and even though I know that's bad, I probably will.

My parents are supposed to come home next week.  There will be a few days which overlap whereby they are home and I will still be unemployed.  That is temporary since they will be leaving virtually straight away.  Moreover, I actually welcome them home because the water pipe leaks are getting a lot worse.  The tape isn't holding the pinhole leaks I see in that one section of pipe, and there are now really bad leaks springing from both water shutoff valves.  Again, since I have so much time, I might get around to trying to fix them.  Or I might continue to keep turning the water off and making sure there are pails and mops to collect the water when I turn the water on.  Bought Shamwows too, so that should help with any huge messes.

So I guess what I'm saying is that right now I sort of am playing with house money.  Will I maximize the time I have to myself?  Probably not.

My parents arrive home in less than a week, and amongst all the other things I haven't had time to do in the six weeks they've been gone, I haven't gone through as many papers as I wanted to.

I brought home about three bags of shit from storage.  Those three are the ones closest to the front of my storage unit.  That's important because, apparently, the door to my unit does not completely protect from rain; storms have brought water into the unit, and I guess it seeped into the bags that I took home six weeks ago.  It was hard not to notice that everything in those bags have been warped and rotted by the moisture and snow.  One bag was so bad that it ripped apart as soon as I brought it home.

Everything in them is at least partially ruined; that includes EWs, sport programs, and old magazines.  That has given me enough of a push to read through and throw away much of the ruined contents, especially my copies of City Pages and ESPN The Magazine.  But there are a lot of papers left to go through, and I won't have time to go through them all before my folks return.  So, off they go back into storage.

I am sort of happy that I went through as much as I have.  I just wish my parents aren't coming back so I can finally concentrate on reading and then tossing them.  Maybe they'll go back to Vegas soon, who knows?

You Know What? I Think Martin Freeman Is An Asshole

I guess I need to vent my rage over what happened in Charlottesville by spraying my hose at another person.  But when I saw what I saw last night, I kind of want to talk about it.




You know Martin Freeman, actor?  Bilbo Baggins, he's on Fargo, he is Watson on PBS' Sherlock?  I think he's an asshole.  I kind of knew that in 2014, when an in-depth piece about him was done in Entertainment Weekly in conjunction with his stint in Fargo.  This guy, who seemed to be a diffident Englishman on TV came off as, well, as a defensive prick.  It's kind of eye-opening how odd of a mensch he was in this story, and you should read it.




That perception of him was reinforced on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night.  I stayed up to watch Anthony Scarramucci at the beginning of the show and Liam Gallagher at the end.  But in the middle was guest Bob Odenkirk, who was appearing for Better Call Saul.  Colbert asked him how Odenkirk, who made his bones as a comic actor, has changed his approach in acting now that he's a dramatic one.  He eventually said that one of the main differences is that you cannot suggest how your fellow actor should do a scene in a drama the way you can recommend a line to your co-star in a comedy.  He learned that the hard way from Freeman (who he says are now friends ... OK) on the set of Fargo.  When Odenkirk said that Freeman should do something different in a scene they're about to shoot, Freeman stared at him, burned his sight through him and said, quietly and thus menacingly: "Don't ever do that again."


I wasn't there on the set, obviously.  But if any actor did that to me, just for suggesting something, that asshole would be dead to me.  So all you people who are fanboying and fangirling over Freeman, you people are starfuckers.  I see right through him.  I see the real him.  He's an asshole, and thus unworthy of my respect.


Will see him in The Black Panther, though.

Alright, This Is It

Mother comes home early tomorrow.  Apparently my stripper friend is coming from, like, Worthington to clean the house.  I have done everything I could to either store or hide all the shit I have that makes my parents upset.  The only thing I can do now is wait for her, maybe trash the water filter for which I paid an exorbitant amount for its replacement, and hope that what she does is good enough and that I didn't forget anything else.

It's the hiding that bothers me.  I went to my storage unit last night and it's about seven feet high.  I have so much shit that I don't even know where to begin.  I have sworn that I would get through them -- take a bag, separate out the sports programs and copies of Entertainment Weekly, finally read all the newspapers I have stored, and that is high I would get through them all.  But while I have many good excuses, I saw, in that pile that is now bigger than I am (I have created this monster, the same way that the Republicans have created Donald Trump and his followers), what using all those excuses have carried me to.

---

I have to wake up very early in the morning because Mother is obsessed with flying for cheap on Spirit.  God.  But I have to thank her for letting me use the minivan one final time tomorrow (Saturday) to get to work and then to St. Paul for the tournament final.  Hopefully it'll be warm enough on Sunday to finally melt the ice and snow that's encasing my new car, which I have decided to take out of storage instead of the old one; I'll tell you guys more about it later.  Let's just say that after working on the old car I checked to see if I could open the doors of the new car through the tarp and cover and ice and snow, and the battery worked, so that's why I just begged Mother for the van and will try like hell to get the new car working.  Wish me luck while I resettle after yet another disruption.

---

Turns out she did come.  She said Thursday, then had to cancel, but she was able to do it late last (Friday) night.  Brought her precocious son, too.  Just got done touching up the last of the cleaning up, and I think it's just about right -- clean enough for them to not be angry, but not so clean that they get suspicious.

Now, whether that'll impress Mother, who knows?

No Chance To Ride This Train (Scheduled Post)

Amtrak had this ingenious idea which, to be honest, they ran with after it was originally imagined by an author named Alexander Chee.  Chee was quoted on a tweet saying it would be nice if the always-late national rail company of the United States allowed writers to write on their trains because he believed riding the rails is so stimulating to writing.  Subsequently after a retweet, Amtrak asked the original tweeter and the re-tweeter on Twitter if they wanted to do a "residency" on one of their trains.  And from this rare move of quasi-governmental/corporate spontaneity, the #AmtrakResidency program began.

I thought that getting write on a train, for free, would be awesome.  I love trains, or at least the idyll of it.  I have been fascinated by national commuter rail systems throughout Europe because of how efficient it is.  I love being able to go to distant points of the country, even the globe, without any effort.  The views on a train seem to be great no matter which train you are on on planet Earth.  I will have nothing to do but to write, but I'll have the time and the space to do that, which is especially good since I don't do much besides blog on here.  Finally, even though Amtrak remains horridly inefficient, hey, why would complain if Amtrak allowed me to come on board on its dime?

So I applied online.  It was really short, and thankfully they didn't ask for samples.  They had a few questions about why I would want to write on a train trip, which in my case would be the Empire Builder, probably from here to either Seattle or Portland and back (needed to get back in writing shape) and what kind of writing I would do while riding (not necessarily travel writing, but anything that strikes my fancy, thanks to Amtrak).  I didn't think I had a chance since I'm nothing more than a blogger, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, you know?

Late last month they revealed the 24 winners.  And although I knew there were vastly more talented and successful writers who would (and should) get these residencies, I didn't think I would be utterly outgunned by those who won.

In other words, I kind of thought that those who won would be authors who are published, but did not have much renown -- you know, people who teach in college to put food on the table.  I had absolutely no idea of the caliber of writer, and celebrity, of those who applied.  There was no damn chance in hell for me to get a train ride if these are the people who were picked.  I mean, look at this list -- I know some of the writers who snagged a residency.  For example, I've been a subscriber to Entertainment Weekly since Issue #10 -- I regularly read Lisa Schwarzbaum when she wrote, then did film reviews.  I was competing against her?

There are three other people I know who will take up residencies on Amtrak.  I listen to National Public Radio.  Sometimes I'm driving around at the 7 o'clock hour, when Minnesota Public Radio airs Public Radio International's "The World."  The host, Marco Werman, is going to be on a train.  I follow baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra on Twitter.  Hell, I saw Saul Williams do a poetry reading at the Icehouse last year because I remember jamming out to his song "List of Demands" in that kick-ass Nike commercial!



And he applied to #AmtrakResidency?!  Why in the hell would he need to?  I think he could afford the cost of the trip.  Damn, he could afford to write in his apartment!  I can't.  I'm a starving artist, and I could use the inspiration of a free trip on Amtrak.  But noooooooooooo, I guess they're looking for people who already are accomplished writers to be inspired while sleeping in an Amtrak car into writing some more.

Man, I can't compete against that.  If I knew that a certain amount of mass media notoriety was a prerequisite into applying, I wouldn't have bothered to apply.  But it seems kind of unfair that residencies have been given to people who have "made it."  I kind of thought that #AmtrakResidency was conceived as a way to give struggling writers their big break, those who could not only use the stimulus of being on a train to produce good work but also could benefit from the promotional lift of taking part in a first-of-its-kind program.  The oft-maligned Amtrak has received good PR with this, and a certain type of writer could have as well.  It's a waste, then, to give these precious trips to those who've had a byline on a national magazine, or host their own radio show, or have thousands of followers on Twitter, or had their songs on commercials.  What I once thought was a coup for a company that needed one turned into yet another case of the rich getting richer.

The Lonely, Desperate Hours Before (Scheduled Post)

If I hadn't said it before, I'll say it now: I no longer enjoy going to work.  I am dreading the morning.  This third season has burned me out, completely.

All I want to do is go in, do my job, then leave.  But this year is different, with all the teaching and all the new responsibilities and the problems I have to deal with.  Then there are the personality clashes, the assholes and the non-positive people I also have to deal with.  Plus these people and problems change each day.  It's overwhelming, and I don't like it.

Then I have to worry about the club.  No one's coming out, and now the owner's pushing me out.  And I have no idea how much money we're making.  What am I supposed to do?  This could really be a problem if it wants to be.

On top of all that are the gardening and harvesting I may or may not need to do.  Then I have to freeze the tomatoes, not too late but not too early.  Then I have my parents' real estate interests to deal with, starting after work tomorrow.  And then I need to worry about laundry and picking up the mail I'm leaving around the house.  And that doesn't include any bills I may have overlooked.  And then I have to reconcile my day planner, which means I need to keep track of my expenses again.

Weirdly, in the middle of all this I think I may -- may -- have arranged a date.  And it was with ****a, the girl who stood me up for a massage last week.  I have these two passes from Entertainment Weekly to see the pilot of a new Showtime series called The Affair.  May be sexy -- perfect for seeing with a stripper.  But even that is something I Have To Do, which is something that I have trepidation toward, even if it's supposed to be a good thing.

I need to set up a time with that shrink.

My Daily Post-Work Bathroom Run At The Mall Store

Since beginning this project down in the south metro, I have decided to wait for the hellish south metro traffic to pass me by, instead biding my time at Eden Prairie Center until about 6 or so.  When I leave by then, the knots up 169 have mostly been untangled.  I have never been in stop-and-go traffic once doing this since the project began.  It makes me wonder if in fact I am waiting too long, and maybe whether the roads will be just as clear if I go north on 169 straight away from work.

But I won't change, largely because I don't want to give up what I enjoy right now, not even if I try for just one day.  I have this down to a routine by now: Take a left from work, go to 169, get off just below the loop, take the three rotaries (I love turnabouts!) to Eden Prairie Center, park at the ground level of the ramp so my car's in the shade, maybe take a nap, then go to the store closest to the ramp, take a right to the men's bathroom, take the left, non-handicapped stall (with the thankfully low walls) and sit on the toilet.

It has become a ritual, all this, especially the sitting on the toilet part.  Because after I leave work one of the first urges I have is to relax and take a shit.  I usually thumb through my phone for messages.  Keep trying to get wi-fi through the bathroom walls, but this mall apparently doesn't have wi-fi.  So I sit and wait until my scatological urge passes me by.

I've done this virtually every day since the day after my night project ended.  It's probably gotten to the point where the people who work at this anchor mall know who I am and can even tell at around what time I come in.  Do they question what I do?  Will they send the mall cops after me?

I have only two more weeks of this.  After Memorial Weekend starts, I'm done with this place because I'm done travelling so far down there because I'll be done with the project.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've been to Eden Prairie Center before work down there began.  My first time, I think, was a long time ago, back when a movie complex was attached to it.  I received two Entertainment Weekly passes to see the pilot episode of House on the big screen.  I brought my sister along.  We both hated it, and I could tell that Gregory House would be an insufferable asshole I would want to spend no time being around.  But, yes, that was the first time I went to Eden Prairie Center.  So that's a memory for ya.

Oh, BTW, even though I go into the bathroom, I've never actually taken a dump.  I usually just sit and wait for nothing to come out.  That is, until today, when something actually did come out.  It was a byproduct of the combined diarrhea and constipation attack I had when I woke up this morning.  Might blog about it at some point.

RIP, TWoP

It was on Thursday night, the night of March 27, when I was looking through my Facebook, and I saw on the "Trending" area on the right side a headline about a TV chat site I've been a member of for a long time, Television Without Pity.

The headline: That it's being shut down.

Shit.  I go over there and see that there's a message saying that its last day of full operation is Friday, April 4 -- basically another 24 hours.  Now there may be some reprieve.  The recaps, from which TWoP made their name on, were supposed to be shuttered at the end of this week, but outcries from fans convinced NBC Universal, the owners of the site, to keep them up indefinitely, supposedly.  Meanwhile, forums may remain up and running until May 31, but after that, they are gone, no reprieve.

Regardless, unless there is some last-minute sale (and who knows if that may or may not happen), another piece of my life will be dead forever.

I feel guilt, however, because this isn't really a case of something leaving me, but me leaving it.  When I immediately went to their website and logged in, it was the first time in months, possibly over a year, that I've done that.  When I posted a message of condolence, it was the first time I did that in probably over a year, when I talked about how a product I saw on Shark Tank called a Spaddy Daddy looked like a sex toy.  It was only one sentence, very unlike the paragraphs of thoughts and expressions and cries from the soul back when I spent hours and hours on Mighty Big TV.  But those days are long gone, and as of April 4, for all intents and purposes, so is TWoP.

---

It all began when I got hypnotized by Survivor.  I didn't believe the hype so I willfully missed the first couple episodes.  But then the buzz got too much, so I decided to check it out.  And goddamn, I was hooked.  Not only by the bizarre, real-life aspect of what really was a game show, but by seeing dramatic themes of trust, betrayal and evil portrayed not by characters, but by real people.  In short, that is how the reality genre renewed my faith in television.

I could not get enough of Survivor, and I knew other people were on the Internet talking about it.  For hours on end in college I'd be at the library and checking out my favorite groups on Usenet (remember that?!) talking about stuff from porn stories to movies.  So I knew there had to be, like, some chat room or something that's talking about all things Survivor.  I therefore Googled (or, just as likely back at the dawn of the millennium, Altavista'd) "Survivor" and "chat room" or "Internet board," and either the first or second entry on the list was this place called Mighty Big TV.  Hmmm, interesting name, I thought, they must be good.  So I clicked on it.

It gave me everything I needed and more, about Survivor and other shows I was and was not interested in.  And there were other rat children (my pet name for Survivor fanatics) who lit up the site -- my kind of people, also obsessed with who screwed who and why.  Eventually, on Tuesday, July 11, 2000, I signed in and joined Mighty Big TV.

From that point on, till about seven or eight years ago, I was a big fan of MBTV, which changed its name (I don't know why, that was a great name) to Television Without Pity.  When I began I wrote opus upon opus about each week's Survivor, commenting on why did he or she do that, and more importantly What This Means To Us As A Society (won't bore you to death, but I am not being melodramatic when I say that not only is the show a breakthrough in television, but it finally broke the seal on Man seeing itself as venal, vain, greedy and immoral).  I then migrated from reality show to reality show -- The Amazing Race, The Mole (RIP), The Bachelor, Temptation Island, America's Next Top Model, and up to Dancing With The Stars.

There have been some tribulations.  I've had heated arguments with other posters and some of the moderators on Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity.  There was one woman, who has since gone to some renown, who was notorious for being incredibly bitchy towards members, including me.  (The time I was able to get one of her warnings overturned after I appealed to her boss, one of the site's founders, is, no joke, one of my biggest accomplishments in my life.)  There was a time when the founders broke the news that TWoP had to downsize in order to cut down on bandwidth and save money.  At that point they solicited us members to pay for ads we created for the site.  In 2007, however, they sold TWoP to Bravo.  I don't exactly think that was the reason I drifted away from it, but I nevertheless did.

The big thing I regret about TWoP was a promise I made about posting to my own little thread the moderators were OK with me maintaining, something called the Reality Television Awards.  It would be my thing where I would rank all the worst and worst of the Competitive Reality Shows on TV.  I was going to be the main contributor, but there was the other guy who was going to help.  Well, I did it successfully for, like, two years, then all of a sudden I either got busy or lost interest around 2010, I think.  I promised everybody and this guy that I would get around to it as soon as I had the time, but I never did.  Subconsciously, maybe that was the reason I stopped going to TWoP -- I felt guilty about not delivering on my promise.

So I double down on my guilt.  The only reason I went back to TWoP to post is when I heard it was closing.  I've been one of hundreds paying respects to the site, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who went away from TWoP over the past few years.  I still don't think it's, for lack of a better term, "right" that we're expressing our condolences.  If we really cared, we would have stuck around and continued to post.  It would, well, "just" if we didn't come back to post at all.  I guess I had to, for selfish reasons.  It may have been the independent website (I don't count ESPN.com, which is probably the website I have visited in my life the most) that impacted my post-collegiate life the most.  And like all things I catch back up with in my life, I can't say it's important to me now, but I still don't think I can live without it.

It really wasn't until now that I truly understood the global reach of Television Without Pity.  I had no idea that mainstream sites like USA Today and Entertainment Weekly ran stories about its demise (as well as sister "Web 1.0" site DailyCandy).  But the reporter from the former is a huge fan, and that of the latter actually worked for TWoP as a recapper.  In fact, I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of people who wrote on TWoP have gone on to write in other, more popular places, entered other media, or otherwise maintained an Internet presence in some capacity.

Again, while the recaps live on for the foreseeable future and the forums can be posted onto till the end of May, TWoP (which seems to have stopped updated as soon as the news came down it was closing last week) ceases live operations some time tomorrow.  If you've never been, go to it.  You will be tapping into something that has made me who I am today.

Shortest Day Of The Year, Halfway Through My Vacation At Home Alone

This weekend, apparently, was a crossroads.  (ETA: My mistake -- no apparently; last weekend [I'm putting this edit in the early morning of December 28] definitely was a crossroads.)

Saturday was the Winter Solstice, aka The Shortest Day Of The Year.  From here on out the days are going to get longer and, supposedly, brighter.  In some ways I don't think the Summer Solstice can come soon enough, with all the fucking snow I've had to clear.  On the other hand, there is a romance to the season.  Winter in many ways sucks, but the weather also is a sign of things turning down energy-wise.  Not just the holiday season, a time for (theoretically at least) family and friends, but just also for life and for yourself.  Things slow down, and for me, it slows down to a much more manageable level.  The Shortest Day Of The Year, one in which there is (theoretically at least) the fewest amount of sunlight, means (theoretically at least) the fewest number of minutes where I'm expected to do something, and doing nothing to me is bliss.  But from here on out we rev up our internal engines because there's a whole lot of daylight, and stuff we can do outside and stuff we can do, period.

I keep thinking about my temp job at the State Fair this past summer, where it was totally hot, obscenely hot, dangerously hot.  As much as I enjoy the changing of seasons here in Minnesota, I did not, and do not, like that.  But with the Winter Solsitce now behind us, we're hurtling towards days like that.  The cold's bad, but the heat's fucking worse because you can put layers on, but you can't tear off your skin to cool yourself off.

---

In the meantime, if my calculations are correct, Sunday marked the halfway point of my parents' vacation in Europe.  The days where I have the run of the house to look forward to are now outnumbered by the days I had said run.  And unfortunately, this makes me jumpy.

For one thing, I don't think I can make any huge plans anymore.  Despite me having, oh, less than four weeks left, I don't believe I can, for example, break out all the Entertainment Weeklys I have stashed in my closet and seal them all up.  It's a daunting task, one that will take weeks.  And yes, I have that, but not enough, you know?

I have loved not hearing the sounds of my parents' voices at home, and doing whatever the fuck I want.  I've got everything strewn all over the floors -- clothing, papers, magazines, my cum towel -- and I don't give a fuck.  That's freedom.  But crossing the halfway point means that I have to look forward to spending a few hours picking all that shit up, and then cleaning the house -- or, well, at least to a point where it's presentable.  Oh, who the fuck am I kidding, I don't give a shit about cleaning the house.  I'll just leave it dirty because I'd rather take the verbal abuse from My Fucking Father.

What I haven't really had is downtime.  Really, I haven't.  I can do things at my own pace in my own way now that I'm alone.  But really, I've had committments that take up most of my time anyway.  Work is one thing.  Blessed that I am to work, sometimes I wish I could just call in sick and spend an afternoon doing nothing, just because.

The other major time committment I've had, I'm afraid, is shoveling snow.  After we got socked a couple weeks after my parents left, we've been getting these clippers, about one to two inches of the fluffy, dandruff-type snow.  But they've come about every three to five days, so I've spent a lot of time clearing the driveway and the deck.  That takes a couple hours, which frequently means an evening after I get home from work is shot.

So too was Sunday.  I decided to take advantage of what I think was the end to a surprise flurry this morning and afternoon to shovel.  But just as I was about to get done with the driveway, it started snowing again.  And then I saw on the news that there's going to be snow (a light amount of the light kind of snow) tonight ... and then Tuesday night.  That means more shoveling -- as well as, I keep forgetting, walking outside every morning and continually being shocked and angered that I have to take a few minutes to clear my car of the snow that's built up on it overnight.  Ever since the snow began this winter I have been consistently late because I don't get up early enough to warm up the car, clear the car of snow, and build in the extra time it takes to get to work.  Maybe I don't get up early because I already wake up too early, or it's too cold, or I'm just doing it on basic lazy and stubborn principle, but I'm just not going to do it.

See, if there was less snow, I could devote that time to doing other things, like writing or catching up on alumni stuff, or, more importantly, sleep and resting in my bed -- which is what I finally did tonight.  Alone.  With the sound of the TV cranked up as much as I goddamn well pleased.  And then I remember that, pretty soon, they'll be home, and I won't be as free, and I won't be as happy.