A Typical, But Not Completely, Typical Day

I woke up, today, around 11:00, after about fours of sleep. Seems like I can't sleep any longer than that, lately, without waking up from some strange dream. They're mostly "guilt dreams". I'm only theorizing about that. But I guess I've been burying my conscious and it only escapes during my sleep. This beast has been having it's fun with me for the past month and IT is getting mighty annoying.

Pop goes the nasty shit! It's running out of my mind's door! Unfortunately, it's still in my sleepy head, where it stays trapped. Fuckin' guilt! I liked it better when I didn't dream. A decent sex dream would be welcome, for certain.

When I'm awake, I don't think about anything "I believe" I've done wrong. Normally. But, like the therapist pointed out during one session several years ago... He said I persecute myself and think I deserve punishment for things I've said or have done towards people. He also said that I seem to have the tendency to formulate it in my head like whatever I said or did- to be blown out of proportion. He based it on things I had said, when I was around this or that person, from other sessions.

Makes sense. So now the shitty goop of misplaced or unwarranted guilt is popping up in my dreams. Ah, how nice. But I'm going to confront it head on and admit that I'm not that bad a person and carry on... Even if it takes a hammer to my head to knock the evil goop out my ears. I can't afford therapy at the moment, so I'm going to do battle with my stupid brain, by myself. Like Homer Simpson, I'm going to give it a good talking to and tell it who's boss. If that doesn't work, it's HAMMER TIME, baby.

As I was saying, I woke up, made coffee, petted the cat and put two Bacon and Cheese Hot Pockets in the microwave. Soon enough, I ate them and played my messages on the answering machine. One was from the wifey, telling me she made it to work alright. Good. Next, was the receptionist from my doctor's office. She was letting me know that my insulin pens for my diabetes came in from the patient assistance program. Definitely good news. They had messed up the order of insulin last time and if I hadn't caught that it was the wrong stuff-- when I picked it up from the doctor's office, I could have taken it home, injected it into myself and.... Who knows?

After that, I showered, made supper for later tonight and got my clothes on. That's right! I was cooking in the nude! Excited? No? Alrighty then. Anyway, while I was managing to cook up some Tuna Helper, the cat started going nuts when he smelled the tuna cans I was opening. He kept leaping on my legs as the cans slowly turned round and round the electric can opener. At one point, I thought he was going to strike at my lopsided nutsack and rip into it. Then my precious jelly beans would fall out! Then I would feel blue. My solution is to give him a can of Fancy Feast cat food in a can. It's something we give him as a treat, once in awhile. It says on the can that it is Whitefish and Tuna flavored. Ah ha... That will fool him, I think, patting myself on the back.

I set the bowl of juicy, succulent cat food down on the floor (are you as horny as I am?) and he eats it like a little piggy. His normal bowl of cat food is sitting there, halfway full, next to the water bowl. He's a spoiled little bastard. But then I feel sorry for him because he is our only "child" now. Mufasa, our eldest cat, died, recently. We only have Victor now. He's loving and playful and lonely. We plan on getting him a playmate after Christmas. It's too hectic these days and it takes patience to train a kitten, which is what we'll be looking for when the time comes. No pound kitties, though. We had extremely bad luck with that. That was years ago. Max the Cat was his name and shitting behind and beneath megaton furniture, for no good reason, was his game. Sometimes we didn't find his piss and shit surprises until it was too late. Almost needless to say, Max was returned before I could kill him. We gave him four weeks too many. If I wanted to clean up shit for longer than four weeks, I would have had a friggin' kid. No thanks. There's already enough breeders in this world as it is. Many of them aren't equipped with enough brains or conscious to do battle with themselves.

But, on the same token, responsible parents are just as easy to spot.

I say we give the rotten adults an abortion. Or... Any more than two kids, then you have to give up your genitals. Sorry. Rules are rules and we know how humans love their rules. Lap dog, over breeding imbeciles that don't put on their turn signal when they're changing lanes, by damned it! What was I talking about? Damn those voices in my head.

Immediately, when I finished cooking, I got dressed, brushed my teeth, put on my jacket and hat and out the door I went. I went to doctor's office to pick up the insulin pens, went to the grocery store to pick up lunch meat and bread, went to get monetarily raped at the gas station where the gas is currently at $2.85 a gallon and then I went back home. I checked to see if they got my insulin order right this time. They did! Jackpot! I get to live a couple more months. Hooray. And stuff. After putting everything away, I got back in the truck and drove to the park, with haste.

I had to get my daily park walking done in a hurry. It would be dark soon and wifey was going to be home in a half hour. I try to be there for her so I can be a good husband and not get a beating with the baseball bat. I'm so abused. OK. I might be exaggerating just a little. But she does confide in me that she would like to cut my dick off while I'm asleep. But strangely, that's not why I have trouble sleeping at night. By the way, I laugh when she says such things because I threaten to twist her nipple off now and then. It's like an ongoing comedy routine we have going on. 21 years. Quite healthy.

So off to the park I go. The first person I see is the guy by the athletics supply building. This building sits close to the tennis court that is hardly used and still looks new and the basketball court, nearby, that is the same way. The guy, I'm guessing, is the guy who takes care of supplying the athletes with enough balls and stuff to do their thing. The door was open, obviously, with a key. He looked at me, giving off a little vibe of nervousness. Maybe I imagined it.

All I've ever seen, as far as any games being played at the park, is two Pee Wee football games attended by millions of crazed parents and the other times when a couple kids were playing a few basketball games. Anybody else you see in that park are walkers, runners, people trying to fish at a lake without fish and the park employees. Maybe once a week, you'll see a cop car run through the park. If you wanted to, you could probably get away with fucking, sucking, fisting, lickin' the va-jay-jay and other horseplay down at the large gazebo by the lake without too much trouble. Party time.

Anyway, the supply guy at the building says, ""It's getting colder out here."

I say, "Yeah, it is."

Hell, I don't know what else to say. Supply Guy didn't give me much to work with. By the way, it was getting colder. It was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit at the time. For the rest of you, in other countries, I have no idea what that is in Celsius. I won't check, either, because I'm American and don't give a shit. I think that's the American Way. The metric system can go fuck itself, too. The last person who tried to teach me the metric system was a nun from the parochial school I attended. I rammed a pencil in her eye. Not to worry, though. It was a No. 2 Pencil. And she cried out, "Praise da Lawd!"

After walking the usual path, I find a second person. He is walking toward me from the other direction. He looks like he could be crazy. He's wearing a grey coat with a black sock cap on his head. So I nod to him and do what most folks do in that situation. I say, "Hi.", without really looking at him. He does nothing but nod his head, not wanting to be bothered by my evil, intrusive greetings and keep his hands in his pockets. I wonder if he's hiding Barbie Doll heads in his pockets. Then I wonder if they still have the bathrooms locked or unlocked up ahead in the yellow building. I have problems with my butt. It likes to shit. Although I'm not at the stage of routine adult diaper wear, I have had an accident at the park because they will lock them when it gets closer to winter. During that accident, it was so cold... The turds froze to my leg underneath my pants. Talk about feeling blue... and brown.

When I got home, I was able to shake a leg to pop the turdcicles from the very bottoms of my pants legs.

Minutes go by during my walk now. I have to stop every five to ten minutes because of my foot conditions. I have inoperable 2 and a half inch heel spurs (my feet have been X-rayed so many times, I lost count) and equinus deformity on both feet. The heel spurs have connected to the rest of the bones in my footsies. It's like walking on railroad spikes with misshapen, unbalanced feet. I've tried everything so spare me the advice that I've heard a billion times. Thanks, anyway, stranger. I've done my time with the fancy insoles, shoes and whatever. I've had almost thirty years of experience with it. But I force myself to walk short distances, anyway, because I still need to exercise. It's called perseverance, people. I was going to the gym almost every day for a year and a half and lost thirty pounds but that routine got fucked up during the continuous moving fiasco with my dad's old place that lasted 6 weeks. Now, I'm just trying to keep up with my walking routine.

Regardless, I see a couple walking their pet dog. It has a pink outfit on. I restrain myself from killing the couple. I smile, then say, "Hi. How are you tonight?" They say something back but it doesn't matter. I'm not listening. I'm still thinking of the poor dog in the pink cowboy outfit. As I walk further, I wonder if it's too late to limp back and bash the couple in their heads, thus freeing the dog. Then I think, Well the next thing to happen, if successful, would be the dog rewarding me, with it's rescue of it, by biting a finger off from my hand and taking my nose off my face. Oh well. I keep walking. No good deed goes unpunished. This has always been especially true, in my experience.

In conclusion, I struggle through the rest of my walk, make it home in time before the wife, serve her and I supper and watch a couple shows that we pre-recorded the night before. We talk for awhile. My wife goes to bed early. She's tired. It's getting busier where she works. And now, I'm typing on this keyboard and telling you I'm about to sign off. Who knows? I may come to your blog and leave a comment. Ah, can you feel the excitement?

Behold! You are at the end of this journey I took you on, brave soldier. You must celebrate by flagellating yourself. Or by fixing yourself a hot cup of coffee. Your choice. I won't peek.

Shock Has Stuck Around

From birth to present time, I've always been easily shocked by the actions or words of other people. Until I was in my teens, I didn't say much. Instead I chose to listen and observe people. The conclusion of 40 plus years of observation has led me to the simple fact that one thing unifies and defines everyone in this society. And that one thing is insanity.

Growing up in a small town, I originally, until the time I was ten, lived in a small four room house that had neither a bathtub, shower or toilet. We were poor but we made do. Our drinking water came from an old cistern. A kind of well. When it was later cleaned out, it had these little albino frogs jumping around down at the bottom of it. Yummo!

My only friends and neighbors for miles, until I was six, were a family called The Hogstons. Yeah, that was their actual last name. Their only kids were two young boys. They had a couple dogs as pets... and then some. For fun, the boys, David and Lowell (about my age at the time) would play "The Lemonade Game." If you're thinking that this game involved running around in circles, pissing into each other's mouths all the while, then you would be correct. sir. I even have memories of them humping a family wiener dog, but I didn't know back then what the hell they were doing because I WAS A GODDAMN KID.

Sure they would invite me to play their games. But usually, even while I would say "No thanks," unsteadily, I was in a state of shock. I would offer my own ideas like, "Let's go ride bikes." They would have none of those (normal) types of childhood hobbies.

The one thing they did that really scarred me for life was when they locked me in a cold, spider- infested, cobweb filled basement, with the lights out. I screamed for hours. When the door was finally opened, I was in shock and feared the dark from that day forward.

Eventually, I distanced myself altogether from them and collected shiny rocks off of the gravel road that led to our house and rode my bike for my main hobbies. I also collected matchbox cars and began making these little staple and paper books about the pets we had. I even included my own illustrations. Later on, I began writing short stories about anything. My imagination was great. When I wasn't doing that, mom and I would take walks down the road. I wish I had stronger memories of that than anything else. By the way, my new best friends, eventually, became an apple tree and a cat named Pepsi.

Anyway.... Back to the neighbor kids:

These boys could easily play that moronic cousin's family (Randy Quaid played the father) in the National Lampoon's "Vacation" movies. Inbred cousin-screwing morons are one thing, but it's quite another thing to drink your brother's pee and fuck the family dog. Even as a wee lad, I knew that was wrong.

My next big shock happened when I started going to parochial school. Catholic school. We had nuns for teachers. This was when nuns always had to wear the penguin outfits. (Watch "The Blues Brothers" movie) You know, black and white, curtain-cloth type garments that hung down to the ankles.

One sister was a principal. She might have claimed herself as a holy god servant but she was more like a husky quarterback-sized woman cursed with a bulldog face and heart of pitch black tar . She was also a cold hearted bitch... In case you didn't catch the implication before.

This sister -we'll call her Sister Harker, delighted in punishing whoever she thought was getting out of line. Sometimes, a ruler against the knuckles would be used. Other times, it would be a hard hand smacking you across the face with enough force to knock your teeth out. Ahh... precious memories.

My friend, Russell and I, quiet outcasts from the usual rabble of school kids, were walking to the daily morning mass before school one day. You would be forced to walk to church in two straight lines, never allowed to make a noise. It was almost like marching. Hell, it was more like they were the military.

At one point, during those 8 years of parochial school, Russell and I dared to whisper something to each other while walking down the hallway towards church. Remember: We were normally very quiet, even during recess, on the playground. This was a more rarer event than when Bush Jr. made a correct decision during eight years as president. Suddenly, as Russell and I whispered, our heads crashed together as if the gods themselves had struck us with lightening. Sister Harker screamed, "You are not allowed to talk!"

I was in so much shock, I didn't understand the words coming out of her mouth. My friend told me what she had said later on.

Harker grabbed my friend's arm and my own. What next? I wondered. Public execution? Instead she chose to present the both of us to the rest of the class and lecture everyone on not talking on the way to church. For the crime, the punishment, in comparison, was being made into a big Broadway play, of sorts. Luckily, or unluckily, I was watching the twittering little birds above my head. Tweet. Tweet.

I've never looked into the possibility of a concussion. Ha.

Sister Harker was as big and strong and mean as a rabid sumo wrestler. I found out she turned 95, just recently. More proof of that old saying "Only the good die young". Maybe living that long on this rock called Earth is her punishment.

Part Two of this post is coming up next.