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9:55:00 AM EST
Feeling Embarrassed
Uh, Yeah
Baltimore, Md 11/8/07 9 am-
I was on my way to work this morning, wiping the scalding cheese off my chin that had shot out of my ham and cheese Hot Pocket, when I decided I'd stop into J-land and post an entry. But it seems, my drunk-ass self beat me to it last night. Either that or, judging by the writing, one of the dogs snuck down and pounded on the keys a while. Apparently, the spell check key doesn't work when I'm drunk. I wonder what's up with the fear of being judged. Seems like a problematic symptom for someone who intends to send out queries that are sure to bring a bunch of rejection letters. Oh well. I'll worry about that some other time.
It's no coincidence that I have J-land on the mind. One of the ladies in my critique group asked me yesterday whether I have a blog up yet. Being the man that I am, I stammered a bit and denied that I do. They all have their little blogs, web sites on which they sell any books they've written. I've checked some of them out, even some of the web sites of professional writers, and I've found them to be pretty trite and extremely shallow. You know, put on the best face for the readers, because the readers couldn't possibly want to buy books from someone who's not perky and well balanced.
I suppose I'll put one up at some point, and it'll be just as ridiculous as theirs are. Maybe we'll have a picture of Barbara and me in the kitchen, she'll throw some flour in my face and the caption'll be "Fred and his wife Barbara get silly in the kitchen". Can't very well have put in there that "Fred and Barbara like to get wasted and cook. Occasionally, they even slap the pots off the island in the kitchen and have wild monkey sex under the pot rack. In this picture, Fred goes doggie." Maybe another picture of me in cheesy cardigan sweater, walking the dogs. Couldn't have the reality shot of Cowboy greeting me like he does by ramming his snout in my crotch, "Cowboy greets daddy in his own, special way."
If I do put one of those up, I'll be terrified that I'll sneak down like I did last night and write something. I wonder what it would do for book sales if I wrote in a blog about the groovy acid trip I took at Pitt when I ended up bowing to the Penguin God that stood atop Soldiers and Sailors Hall. Or if I told about the time I climbed on the roof to peek over and get a glimpse of my sister's boobs. I bet the kids would love that one.
This sneaking down at night to write has become a routine of sorts. I get home, walk the dogs, we eat, then Barbara wants to spend some time together. She feels I owe it to her, and I suppose I do. Do I resent it a bit? Sure, after all, nothing hinders a man's pursuit of his lifelong dream like a wife. It's not that I don't enjoy her company; I enjoy it very much; it's just that, after a few drinks - and we're drinking pretty much every night again - she just wants to watch TV. That would be fine, but she wants to watch it with me. It's almost like some kind of quest she's on, find the show that'll be "our show" that we can watch together and we'll have something to talk about besides work.
So I sit with her and watch, then, once she falls asleep, I go downstairs to the computer like a man sneaking out of the house to go see his mistress. It's perverse on some level, but it works for us for now.
My last entry made it sound like I hate everything about work. That's not the case. I enjoy the people I work with. They're my friends. We stay after work on Fridays and have a few beers together. We're all about the same age, and are a product of the seventies. We eat lunch together and laugh every day. What I hate is the fact that I have to think about something other than what I want to think about. I think I've probably touched on this before. I wonder if the fact that I resent having to make a living makes me lazy.
Went over to my parents house last weekend to "help" them. Dad's back is really bothering him, as well as other ailments, so he can't do a lot of heavy work. They had the builder run cable to their living room, but mom wanted it on a different wall because she bought a wall unit that she would stick against the wall where the TV was. The TV was to be moved to the wall that was lined with three dressers my dad had made in his shop. He'd spent a year on these things, waist high, white oak, made with the care of someone from the old country who took pride in his work.
On the other side of that wall, is my mother's bedroom. She has cable in there, so it seemed like a pretty simple operation to drill through the junction box in her room, through the wall to the other side. Then, the plan was, that we'd put a splitter on the cable and run it through the wall. So I brought my drill and other tools and dad and I started. We measured from the wall to the junction box and then measured from the wall in the living room to see where the hole would be, and it looked like the cable would come out just in the right spot, right where mom wanted the TV.
We moved the middle dresser out and I went in her bedroom and started to drill. I got about four inches in and hit something soft. It didn't feel like wood or drywall. Even with a flashlight, I couldn't see what it was. We worried that it might be a chase wall and that I had drilled through the vent for the dryer, so we ran the dryer, but no air came out. So, we figured we must not be all the way through. We drove to Home Depot and bought a twelve inch-long drill bit. I drilled farther and farther until the bit was about ten inches in. Still I was hitting something soft, but it was giving way. Then we realized that the living room wall wasn't on the same plane with the bedroom wall because they have a little balcony on that side with their HVAC unit at the end. For a minute we thought we'd drilled into their heating unit, but it turned out that I was drilling into the back of one of those hand-made dressers and through their critical documents like tax returns and birth certificates. I drilled through so many things that, had we been drilling down, we probably would have struck oil. I don't claim to be much of a handyman.
To answer Paul's question, I'm not writing anywhere else. This is more than enough. One of the hardest things I had to do in freeing up time to write was to give up J-land, ESPN, and all the other sites I used to visit every day. They're like crack to me. Anyway, nice to see some familiar voices are still around. Take care guys.
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This is an interesting entry. Thanks for sharing!
Hope you'll get to visit this interesting site as well, containing lots of dating tips and advices.
http://www.dansdatingblog.com/ -
well glad you were back.. but that was almost a month ago. Seems when I'm around you're not.. and vice versa.. People will talk .. they will say we are the same person! ;)
Luv,
Promise -
Yeah, but you should lay off the booze, boy. It'll kill you. Or drive you to kill her. Or something.
-Paul -
Omgosh! Ive missed you! Glad to see you back if only for a little bit!
Best Wishes!
~Terry Ü
2/7/08 12:59 AM
I can relate to racing to the basement to communicate or correspond with others of the same interests. I think it is human nature to find others with the same interest that stimulate the mind.
A Friend of Daniels,
Sara