A Bad Beginning

I am experiencing the title of the first book of a Series of Unfortunate Events: The BadBeginning. Today has started in a most foul way. Listen as Ed wakes up this morning...

Yawn. Stretch. Curse at the alarm. Snooze twice. I wonder how the new carpet faired last night with the cats...

"Let's go see what happened to the new carpet last night, Turtle!" I get up, watching out for Frodo biting my ankles to remind me that he ishungry. I put on clothes and head for the stairs. "Oh look! Someone had a case of the runs on the very first step of newcarpeting! I can't imagine this getting any worse!"Down the steps and around the corner to the right…"Oh look! Someone took a serious shit in the corner on the new carpet! I sure hope I can clean both of these things up. Funny how the carpet is less than 12 hours in the house and you guys shat on it twice! Have you ever made an $800 mistake, Turtle? Well it looks like Daddy has." I clean up the two fecal piles...

A short while later, drinking coffee, I look out the window...

Look at those recycle bins and garbage cans blowing around down the street.People really should take care to not leave those things out like that. It could cause an accident if someone tried to avoid hitting them with their car.

I step into the office for a couple minutes and turn on the computer.I take a shower. Running late for work...Going out to start the car I see my gate has blown open and notice the absence of my recyclebins and garbage cans from my back yard. They are all blowing around down two different streets and in three different yards! Retrieving cans and bins in sandaled feet through wet grass, I drive down and pick up last garbage can far down the street on my way to work. The trashcan is still in my hatch as I write this. That is how my day started. These are the events as they actually occurred.

Have a nice day!

Melancholy

Driving home from closing up the Moritz Law Library at midnight, August 23, 2007, I turn on the radio and hear Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer. I am instantly transported to a carefree time 20 years ago. The scene comes alive in my mind. It is the summer of 1987. It is literally days before school is about to start, my senior year in high school. I am driving on a road through the park, I have just passed Squire’s Castle on the left. The sun is shining and a nice breeze is blowing. I pass several people on the left who are out flying kites. I am in my 1978 Ford Mustang, my first car, not yet killed by a Mazda RX-7. I have playing on my excellent car stereo (that I installed myself a new tape) Peter Gabriel’s So. I have it loud because I can and a part of me wants to show off how nice my car stereo is. I am, after all, only 17. At this moment, I haven’t a care in the world.

I don’t know yet the troubles I will go through for the next 20 years. I don’t know the relationship troubles I will have. The separation and divorce of my parents, The academic dismissal from (failing out of) college. The loss of all my friends from Cleveland. The addition and eventual loss of dozens of new friends in Columbus. The loss of my dad. The loss of my first pet where I had to be the responsible adult and be there at my friend’s end. My own (for lack of a better word) divorce, for living 10 years with a girl is common law in some states. The purchase of my first home. Literally countless untold other anxieties and depressions, joys and delights.

For a moment as I am driving, here in 2007, I almost wish I had the power to magically jump back in time to 1987 and fix up all the things I fucked up along the way. However I know my road would be forever changed doing even one thing differently. And the wiser part of me knows I need to stay on the road I am on now. I need to be here now. And as the song comes to an end and I pull into the driveway of my home, that melancholy almost feels like it brings a sadness to my eyes that will never go away.

Streams of serendipity

Often in my life, I am struck crispy by the interconnected coincidences of a string of events. For example, today I had a gigantic box containing a 42 inch LCD television sitting in my living room waiting for the UPS man to come and take it away because it was broken. There were certain qualities and conditions of preparedness that were necessary for this box to go out into the world. One was a little tiny piece of paper that had a return authorization number on it—without that they would neither take the box nor refund back the $812.07 that had previously been charged to my credit card. The other was an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper with many numbers (order number, return authorization number, etc.) and my signature (required!!). At the moment my string of coincidences begins, this important sheet of paper is inside the box, however it is not signed. I might know this somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but at present, I am not aware of it. So I am standing at the window looking out searching for the UPS man who will take this away and clear up my living room when my back starts to itch. I ignore it for a second but the itch gets worse. So I walk over to the kitchen drawer where I keep my backscratcher. I own no less than three backscratchers—one resides in my desk drawer at work. It is very possible that I would have chosen the backscratcher that resides in my desk drawer in my office and just resigned myself to go sit down and try to reach Eric on googlechat one more time. However, this was not the case. I choose the one in the kitchen. I open the drawer, dig around through packing tape and scissors to reveal the bamboo length of abrasive sweet relief. While scratching away, I look pensively at the scissors and tape and a whole series of tumblers goes off in my head. I wonder if I forgot to sign that piece of paper that said “signature required!!!” So I place the backscratcher back in the drawer, grab scissors, tape and pen and head over to the box, fighting off the playful advances of both Mewbert and Turtle. I cut open the taped box and lo and behold, not signed after all! I sign the paper, tuck it nicely inside the box and put the supplies away thinking this would make an excellent initial blog entry into the way my mind works. If I had not signed that paper, the sons of bitches over at tigerdirect would have likely not taken that damaged TV nor refunded my money. Then we would have an angry blog entry. Now, we (you and me punkrock girl) await the happy blog about putting the freshly shipped unbroken TV up on the TV stand.

Hope you enjoy like me!

Primero Post

First post! Leaping into the 2000's in late 2007 by bending technology to my will. Enjoy like me!