Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about that mermaid.

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"The group is between sight seeing excursions. To pass the time, let’s tell a twisted fairy tale -- something where Cinderella was a fellow, Red Riding Hood was the wolf, or Mother Goose is running Wall Street.

Ahoy gang! Two days in a row now I've done this, without most of the absurdity that made up yesterday's entry. That's alright though.

I'm not really sure how I feel about that fairy tale business...part of me wants to be able to allow myself at least a few moments of fantasy once in awhile, but most of the time I'm just like "naw man, if none of that Cinderella/Prince Charming stuff hasn't happened for real by the time you finished elementary school, it sure as shit ain't happenin' now". Sometimes seeing what the world is really like as a realistic, grown-ass man kinda bums everything out that way.

That, and I think I broke my imagination trying to come up with yesterday's entry. I've never been comfortable writing fiction anyway, let alone a fairy tale, and I've had kinda a stressful day as it is so far (more on that later), so I'm just not feelin' it.

But there was that one morning early on when Charlie ~ , Brother Nature , Andre and I were hangin' out on the deck just watching the waves. There might have been copious amounts of cheap island rum consumed the night before out of bottles with names I can't pronounce consisting of letters there definitely aren't in the English language. Logically, one could stand to assume that when you're not seeing things straight, being on a moving vessel that sits on an infinite expanse of rollicking waters should cancel the former out, and everything looks pretty ok. But we all know that being on a boat after drinking questionable spirits is probably the absolute worst thing for your equilibrium...but we're also not taking this trip because we want to make good choices.

So there's us three good men and a monkey, pondering life's worth after the previous evening, when lo and behold...as if the sun spotted the only giant rock remaining stationary in the sea just to shine down upon it like a spotlight meant for only us to see, the ocean parted our eyes enough to make contact with an honest-to-god mermaid. Like any seamen of questionable intentions, we seized upon the opportunity to serve the situation as only we could. What follows is the ship's artist rendition of what exactly pretty much kinda sorta went down:

Charlie leaned over the rail and, well, I've seen people puke before, and puke hard, but not so much and not that color. If unicorns poop rainbows, Charlie must've somehow swallowed a confetti machine set on maximum propulsion. Joel, flummoxed by the whole sight, concentrated a good ten minutes on trying to return my jaw to its normal, very slight overbite position. And somewhere in our manufactured chaos, Andre's manic chirp-howl got quieter and quieter, like a band in concert playing out a live fade. By the time we regained most of our composure, he was nowhere to be found.

We fell away from distance, as if the mermaid was watching us like zoo animals and she was ready to see another exhibit. In moments, she was gone. They always leave before you can comprehend what you've just seen. Maybe it was best if we all laid down for awhile (seperately, of course...what kind of cruise do you think this is?) and agreed to reconvene around dinner time.

As we rejoined the rest of our party, all we could do was exchange nervous glances at each other while the ladies were talking about how much fun they had during that afternoon's thing that happened and how much more less-crazy things were when the boys weren't around...and mid-chew Charlie just up and blurted "Guys we saw a mermaid and it wasn't weird or anything at all!!" like a little kid awkwardly trying to conceal a secret from his folks about a committed atrocity he was almost ready to burst from. Joel and I just looked at him like "nooooo...no, this isn't happening" when Andre finally strolled in like monkeys do when they've won some kind of freakshow lottery (which, for the record, I don't know what that looks like, but if I did that's how he would make his entrance). His arrival pretty much took all the heat and attention off us.

Because when Andre smiled...everyone wanted to know why his front teeth were chipped.

If you're checking the Captain's Log for the fairy tale box scores, the moral (among many others in this experience) is: No matter how hard you imagine that certain things will or won't happen in life based on what you've learned or read about before, there will no doubt always be a surprise or two once you're actually put in that situation. Even for the wayward monkey.

"After having the worst, the most tiresome day ever, who do you wish to come home to: someone, some animal, or something imagined?"

Ok, I didn't have a terrible day, but it wasn't great, and I'm a little mentally worn out from it, because sure normal people go through life in these ways all the time without incident...which is why I'm gonna let you in on a secret.

I left the house today for the longest stretch of time that didn't include going to my mom's for Christmas. That doesn't sound so bad in context...most everything I need is in a three-block walk from my building, so it's not like I've starved myself or suffered some great tragedy that's required me to be be non-social since pretty much back in October when I had a sudden swing in my mental state and, well, those details are neither here nor there, because they're not relevant.

But I haven't had a great 2015 so far either. Around the first of the year, my laptop stopped working. I flipped my bed around to take advantage of a different outlet because the cord on my tablet doesn't go as far as my laptop's does, and I like to fall asleep watching whatever mindless crap I get sucked into on Hulu. And somehow during the first night after I did that, I must've kicked my nightstand hard enough in my pharmaceutically-induced sleep and then stepped on my glasses while getting up for a drink of water in the middle of the night. When I woke up they were bent as fuck, and I've been dealing with it ever since because "having an eyecare place within three blocks" wasn't a prerequisite I guess when I moved here...and they're plastic frames, so I don't trust myself trying to bend them back without totally busting them. But I don't live close enough to anywhere that getting that taken care of isn't a hassle. I've just dealt with screwy vision until my eyes adjusted and completely not given a fuck that they sit crooked on my face, until the fitting got so bad that, well, anyone who's ever worn an ill-fitting pair of glasses before will tell you that pain behind your ears is one rung below all the excruciating pains of childbirth or getting kicked where a good lord intended you to reproduce from. So I finally made it my mission to get that taken care of today, which meant getting on a crosstown bus...and because I like to make these things economical to me in terms of time and doing other things, the best opportunity has been now when I can (worst-case scenario) get new glasses, and go somewhere that maybe I can also grocery shop and get a bite to eat that isn't something I can just pop out of a can on a whim. I made today a frickin' nonstop feelgood day of taking care of shit. And there's always a problem when I do that, because why wouldn't there be? Even after preparing myself for months about the worst things that could happen. That's why I don't leave the house. I could finally get myself over everything that could possibly go wrong, and yet there's the one or two things I didn't take in to account, and that's always what happens.

I was not aware the bus company jacked up the one-way rate from $1 to $1.50. Luckily I had some singles and a weird accumulation of pocket change, as I dislike carrying cash. No big deal, other than how this increase didn't make its way to my knowledge of things I should know.

The glasses place is in an old, busted strip plaza. And around the corner from that is another (more updated one), with a supermarket and Staples and a...lot more unvacant storefronts. Grab my iPod, a spare bus token I had laying around, put on the optimistic face, made a grocery list that wasn't drug store canned goods, and slashed legs over to the bus stop. Timed it great too, because I didn't have to wait for notoriously late public transportation. I'm thinkin' this is all gonna be a fantastic day.

I even lucked out at the Dollar General and found an $8-nice pair of shorts I wasn't even looking for, because finding a bottle of water there that isn't Pepsi/Coke-contracted out is like unicorn hunting in <fuck this place>. But even that was like 73 cents once I saw it, so yay.

And then the eye place.

I get it...he's a local shop, doesn't take lotsa insurance plans that are, ahem, gummament-funded, and he wants to make a buck. But never have I ever walked into any place that sells glasses for who or whatever is paying for or has paid for them, looking for just an adjustment, and was told "well, there's no one waiting", asked if I'd purchased them from there specifically, and then charged for the honor of having my glasses restored to their unbent-state. And I'm not the person who'll quibble over $5, but for the love of humanity, when I've never paid a dime anywhere to get basically a courtesy "I'll put that back in place for you", I don't care how super nice you are to me once you get me in that chair between the lobby tv and the back-room-where-the-glasses-fixing-magic-happens radio's noise...if you make it so I can't see for a few minutes when 34/40ths of my life has depended on an object to aid in something to create a visually unblurry world, and then pump a noise into each side of my head that I can't completely discern but know it is there, I'm gonna get lotsa frumpy lotsa fast. Especially when you're five-dollaring me for something I always got no-questions free for all of my life.

Whatever, but I'm slowly going from to

But now I'm getting hungry, and the supermarket has a hot food bar, so I totally went beyond my appetite and $6.99/lb'd up on mashed potatoes and pulled chicken in gravy. Let's not even get into how I felt when I got home and realized maybe that chicken was like the 99-cent chili at Wendy's where the meat is leftover unsold previous day's hamburgers, but from a rotisserie chicken. I'm still in a daytime "don't kill someone" prescription antidepressant change, which is also playing hell on my appetite, and now I don't know when I'm eating too much and my body wants to go into food coma mindstate instead of nourishment.

I also went into the supermarket looking for Yancey's Fancy Horseradish Cheese  , which goes far above and beyond the dairy brand bricks of cheddar you can get at the drug stores pretty much anywhere in their stupid limited dairy cases. Walked into Tops thinking I'd spend $15-$20 between that, some Tricuits, and turkey pepperoni. Nope. Almost $50 not including the hot bar fat kid meal, because all the sudden I'm gonna eat healthy again and make coldcut wraps so I needed the two pounds of meat, the pound of cheese, the (thankfully b1g1) tortillas, the lettuce, the diced tomatoes with green chiles, the onions, and the new bottles of bleu cheese and hot sauce. Which is all well and good until I decide I need to continue eating more of this, overserve myself and get the lethargics from that, and run out before I get more. Or it all dies in my fridge before I can finish it...which'll probably piss me off even more. Plus side? I'm done eating out. Minus side? I'm so fucking lazy, and what I say goes for now might not be my attitude in one or six months. And eating...healthier...is pricier to maintain. Basically, all the shit I didn't worry about for the last six months is now up in my head stirring debates. And I'm nearing food coma because of my choices. And my surgically-repaired ankle is telling me how much I don't give a fuck about it by not walking it more often. It's done. It wants to go home.

So I go out for the bus, and decide I've got time, so I'll go to the other not-Dollar General dollar store, because yeah I still wanted to replace that stylus I lost around Xmas for my tablet. I declined at DG not on the 3/$5 pack because why do I need three and no I won't be stupid and lose one again, but this is the craptastic full of crap kind of store, and Staples is next door, so they've gotta have one, but no. I don't need the $17-$30 high-end nonsense they carry, and the more I looked the more the price shot up, and BAM!! There's that food coma kicking in, telling me to GTFO of there because you need to poop and nap and only one of those options is preferable in public, as much as I hate public bathrooms and carrying the more-than-I-needed purchases back into a store I just left. And if I hated pooping publically...of course a family would walk into the store behind me and need to take care of their kid's shitty diaper and the dad's needing to urinate while I'm butt-destroying a public facility, wanting to go home, and not getting the stupid electronics accessory I don't need but would like. Calming down once I did get home took me forever. So much unnapping took place. And I'm so sorry that I just spent forever whining about it, but come the fuck on. I don't leave the house much because all the shit that bothers me when I leave the house happens, and someone's gotta hear about it. Thank you for listening, and my apologies if it wasn't what you were expecting to hear today from me, but that's the life and how it'll change is still something I'm trying to work on, but I can't change people that aren't me and have no idea that I could have a problem with their actions because my shorts are down. Not that I'd engage them beyond passing pleasantries fully anyway when I'm not thinking I should poop over napping, because I just don't care too often, but dammit. If I'm passing judgments upon myself, someone else might be too, and piss on that whole mindset when it's true so much less often than I concern myself with.

And/but/ugggghhh, however you want to get prepositional about it, I made it back on to a bus and sure enough, my iPod wouldn't play. Great, now I'm thinking...OMFG, I get one thing fixed like my glasses, and now something else shits itself on me in the one time (using the bus) I wanted it most to perform. The majority of people don't fuck with you if you have earbuds in, and even if they do you can always be like "Huh? Earbuds, sorry." and they go away aurically. I took them out to cash out at Dollar General, and I swear I wasn't listening to a B-52's song when I finally had the presence of mind to put them back in, but I know I would've skipped over "52 Girls" if that was the place I did in fact leave off on (and don't get me started on why that's even in my collection anymore). A ten minute bus ride home isn't long enough to clear this out one one's own.

But I did get it fixed once I got home, without my laptop, which tomorrow will be a week and if...so, yeah, I'm anticipating that like bigtime. But anyway, I forgot the whole menu/center reset thing, and was trying play/pause/center, so I felt like a jerk once I got it to start playing again. And it went nicely right into...

...A once-obscure bootleg of Radiohead's "The Bends"  . And this pleased me. But sometimes you just want all your shit to be working at the same time, and at the times you need it to most. I can't wait to feel like what that feels like again.

"I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me.
There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt."
Lyrics.  

Thank your good lords it was a beautiful day outside...like 70-degree, sorry I wore a hoodie, still don't sleep with the window open beautiful day. That April good day. Remember back in November when Buffalo got destroyed by seven feet of snow or more in some places? That was five months ago today, and since it's all nice out, apparently in the outskirts of Cheektowaga a memorial has surfaced   in a strip plaza that should've been razed years ago. When small towns overdevelop, and corporations fold or pull out once they got too big, the developers use the decrepit parking lots to put snow in/on/around. And with the plows comes everyone else's litter and street garbage. And that's why this happens.

Ok, well, sorry to bore you with some rants or nonsense that took a lot longer to do than I thought or felt. Hopefully gonna get the rest of my nutjob techiness concerns knocked out quick and I can convince myself to sleep good and long at a decent hour tonight. Peace, all the stars and astral cars, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!