Despondent day

Today is a despondent day. I don’t really understand why, but feel myself to be teetering on some sort of edge. I tried eating it away with bad Chinese buffet at lunch, which only made things worse. It’s funny, though… I’m bringing home the bacon with two huge orders, and still can’t muster the energy to feel better than a shit-house rat. I just want to crawl under the covers, stop bathing, and give up. Too bad about that entire debt thing, and a pestilential need for physical/emotional contact with other human beings. Also, my niggling need to eat more than twice a day. Whatever.

Did you happen to see where I left my head?

Have you ever just had one of those days where you can’t seem to keep your head on straight? I mean, that would have to be about every day for the President, and possibly every other work day or so for most other people in government (let alone the average executive: golf or luncheon?), but for me? To be frank, I’m not exactly Mr. Precision himself, but one could consider me rather more on than off, most of the time… Which is why today is such a flubbing flop of a flummox.

I’ve called several contacts by the wrong name, done things any right-minded salesperson would cringe at, asked inappropriate questions at inopportune times. In short, I appear a total boob, and would be doing myself less damage were I elsewhere (A.K.A., not servicing my customers). The one upside to all this bru-ha-ha is that I’m supposed to be going to see Persepolis tonight with Terra Firma as kind of a roomie-night thing. Orpheus is getting his well-deserved night off, and I think I’ll be laying off the damned booze. Lately, there’s always alcohol in my hand and in my gullet post-workday, which is a pattern all too familiar to me through long experience at home with my parents the band directors. Last night, I just drank with dinner, and it was only white wine. Sweet white wine. Hooray for pork, which doesn’t go with anything else!!!

Interestingly, Sister visited last night, and was helping Terra Firma with dinner while I was attempting to finish up my effort at the same. She finally has a job, which is just tops. She’ll be working part-time as a unit coordinator in a cardiac intermediary unit, with its’ own small attached ICU. She can do this in addition to school and volunteering as an EMS once a month. I admire her work ethic. Also, she’ll soon be able to afford to take Terra’s old car off her hands (Ms. Firma got a brand new Ford Focus, leaving her poor little old Volkswagen orphaned – the perfect vehichle for Sister). This means she’ll be able to drive out under her own power to join us for roommate nights in the future, and not have to worry so much about making ends meet while going to school.

Anyway, I’m about out of steam. At least the post fairly well reflects my scatter-brained-ness, if nothing else. Have a lovely day.

OK, so I owe Orpheus an apology...

So, literally minutes after I posted, O. made it totally ok, got me a drink, and paid attention. Consider this my mea culpa. I'm stupid, and also slightly drunk.

The Gay Super Bowl sucks almost as much as the real Super Bowl.

You know, I realize that this makes me a bad fag, but I fucking hate the Oscars. I hate Orpheus just a little, because he's live-blogging about them, and therefore is paying no attention to me whatsoever, while I make him entirely homemade ratatouille (yes, even the tomato base I use is just a blanched/peeled/cored puree). Next year, I'm totally going to deposit his ass at home, and he can watch the damned thing by himself. This sucks royally. It's luck we fucked before-hand, 'cause he has zero chance of sex right now.

Wallowing in my own Crapulence...

I can’t wait for the weekend to start. I’m tired, dispirited, and hungry for something… Different. I want a vacation and some excellent food. I want something exhausting to make me sleep all the way through the night, something that didn’t ever really used to be a problem for me. I want not to be sick. I want limitless amounts of sex and attention from Orpheus. I want permission to be unremittingly selfish, just once. I want heaps of money, adoration, the best of the best of the best of enameled cookware, and a kitchen that would make Epicurious blush. I want, I want, I want, now, now, now. Most of all, I want not to be here, working, tired and cranky.

Sexual HEALING!!!

We have a new note system at work, and I’m here to tell you that it sucks rocks. Since this travesty is a product that is currently being tailored for us, it doesn’t yet actually interface with our old background system… Rather, it simply has our customer records loaded up to a certain point, and thus any changes happening in the now need to be made in both systems, until such time as updates are real-time. It’s like pulling my own teeth if anything needs to be updated! Furthermore, this new contact management system, as it’s called, is web-based, so sometimes looking up a new record, or at least a different aspect of one, is as slow as weather.com loading in the era of 28-baud modems. Overall? FAILURE!!! The worst part about it is that the folks who are responsible for implementation on our end have been down here all day the last two days, and are being SO kind and receptive! It’s hard not to cry.
Last night, while ferrying my love back downtown to his subterranean abode, I blew out one of my near-bald tires in a pothole as deep as my undercarriage. Even though we only had one bloody wrench and very little experience, Orpheus stayed with me outside in the rapidly dropping temperatures as moral support while I changed my tire. He even called around and got an extra jack for me when the cheap piece of @#$% that came in my car broke, and walked with me to get it. Plus, he was really kind last night. He rubbed my back, and snuggled his butt off. Tonight, I’m picking up my car from the shop down the street from work, picking him up, and going home to brood. Then I’m going to doink O. into my mattress. Well, probably not. But it’s nice to pretend. $400.00 for new tires on a finicky car is bad enough for one day. Sexual healing ueber alles!!!

Retard-love

Valentines’ Day was sweeter this year than last. Orpheus wasn’t disappointed with dinner, and we did have a nice time… And despite the fact that he’s rather sick right now, I wasn’t disappointed when we ended up not having sex. God knows I love making the two-backed beast rather a lot, and I’ve definitely thrown tantrums if I didn’t get enough of “it” in the past. Part of that is my history with the ex, LaGrippe (so called due to her stormy temperament, ability to make one pay for attempting to live normally, and how tired she made me feel all the time), who more or less stopped sleeping with me as soon as we were married. I can’t stomach a lack of physical intimacy, and associate such a state with a general lack of ardor. Fortunately, neither can O stomach physical isolation. Even though he’s been sick, we’ve been sleeping together and snuggling quite a bit. It seems to help him sleep, even if the extra heat generated by his brick-oven-like feverish form is driving me slowly back toward sleep deprivation. And it helps me feel like I’m helping, getting him better, while allaying my natural fears because he can’t perform up to standard (nor, honestly, do I want his snot slowly dribbling down onto me while we fuck half-heartedly).

I remember, once, a friend of mine at Summer Camp used his rather pathetic tarot skills to predict that I’d have an average love. At the time, in the blush of youth, nothing sounded more horrifying to me than such a thing. How could something so banal make me happy? My marriage and subsequent divorce taught me that passionate love alone couldn’t drive a relationship. Rather, it tends to fray the bonds between individuals quite easily with the slightest stress. And the slow stops and starts and halts and gos with Orpheus seem to be teaching me that abiding friendship and love can grow out of something weird, sometimes frustrating, and even a little shy like the connection we have shared this past year. Even passion, that delicate, toothsome, flickering nastiness in the night, can sprout… And how! Furthermore, the more I love, the more things I realize I can love at once. It’s hackneyed-sounding, but it’s just the way things have turned out for me. I’m content. I hope that O. and I last, but we’ll take it slowly, and both learn to be patient with one another in fits and starts. It’s the most beautifully frustrating process I’ve been involved in, ever.

While Away the Hours…

It has become increasingly apparent to me that my work environment is not just hostile to non-executive workforce, but also actively stressful in the extreme. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone today, and have nothing to show for it except a lingering sense of dread that I. Am. Next. To. Go. Ah, well. I’ll enjoy it while I can. Tomorrow, Orpheus and I are going to a place with “local flavor” for V-Day. Literally. Their menu items are named after famous Wisconsinites, and despite this rather gimmick-y menu, I have it on excellent authority that the food is tops. Plus, dinner probably won’t cost $200.00 at minimum. Therefore am I happy? We’ll see. I promise to be more sure about shit some other time.

Really, really, really good things...

This weekend was lovely. Aside from a bit of much-needed sex and Dungeons and Dragons (thankfully unconcurrent activities), I finally ended up having Orpheus’ sister over for dinner on Saturday to thank her for buying me Mac OS 10.5 at the student price. It was pretty damned good, if rather disjointed. We started with a beautiful salad composed of green pepper, tomato, fig, fresh mozzarella, pistachios, fresh-cracked pepper, salt, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a splash of white wine. The second course was my special, Ratatouille (the Movie) inspired take on Ratatouille (pronounced delicious by all), which involves mandolin-thickness slices of a couple extra veggies (potato amongst them), and fennel bulb minced fine in the base tomato/garlic/wine/olive oil sauce right along with the Herbs de Provence (please excuse for the lack of appropriate accents… My computer doesn’t speak any more Frog than I). The last course that I contributed was a lazy-man’s marinated tuna, sautéed in butter and white wine. O. made lovely cranberry scones for dessert, as I lack the baking gene.

People continue to, against all odds, get worse at driving as the winter stretches on. Orpheus will, no doubt, want me dead by the time the trees are budding, if only due to his lack of imagination or any sense of fun where vehicular homicide is concerned. Sadly, that’s about it for interest points for this weekend. Just so you know, though, the sex was really, really, really good. More later!

Meh.

The drive home last night was oddly pleasant. There were few people on the road, so it didn’t really matter that conditions scared the living crud out of me, as there was no one to hit if I screwed up (I didn’t, though). I even stopped at the store to pick up some food, just in case the snow ended up burying me in. Fortunately, I had a hankering for beer, and caved to my baser impulses. This would prove vital later. Also, due to road conditions, Orpheus and I decided together that it would be better if we didn’t see one another last night. This decision was made (as he informed me,) because he loves me, and didn’t want my possible death by traffic on his conscience. Sadly, I agreed.

So, as covered before, everything went swimmingly up through the supermarket. The cashier in the booze section even offered to check out my big order of sku-intensive veggies, something that almost never happens. It was like the sky was smiling at me, through the copious amounts of god-dandruff piling up in the roads. Then, I tried driving home from the store… The road had not been plowed. Cars were stuck here and there, and on a two-way street, there was at most one lane of travel space, with a few duck-holes here and there in the form of side-streets. The first time I tried to go up the hill, I couldn’t do it because of a guy who pulled out in front of me, forcing me to brake. I lost traction, backed up to a turn-off, and tried again in a lower gear. This time, some freak in a minivan, hell-bent for election, sent me sliding backwards into a snowbank to avoid a collision. I had to lug my groceries up to the apartment, then spend the next hour digging out the car, which I couldn’t put in the parking lot behind the building, because the driveway was full of snow to the depth of a good foot and a half. Basically, I carved a parking spot out of the pile of white stuff into which I had regressed.

I dragged my sorry, aching, mucous-y, asthmatic ass back to the apartment, stripped down to my underwear, and parboiled some Italian sausages in beer and spices, transferring to the grill. I drank a good few beers. I watched some Avatar: The Last Airbender (because, despite the alcohol, I’m still less serious than I tended to be at age five). I tried to relax, and think thoughts not in the vein of ritualistic murder of executives, followed by gourmet prep-work, and finally consumption of that too-tainted flesh… Then, I gave Terra Firma a ride to her car, which she’d parked about a 20 minute walk away, as her rainbow-besotted VW has even less ground clearance than my somber champagne Grandpa sled. Since the plows had just been through, this involved another 15-minute session of digging, again a one-man show, as there was only one shovel. Thank god I’m stronger than I look.

I helped another poor sap get his van un-stuck from a plow-drift, incidentally the same asshole who’d gotten me stuck in the first place, so I totally feel morally superior today. I then found my way to the video rental place, where I nabbed a copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ in widescreen, and fell asleep to the soothing strains of the death of Sirrius Black… Only to be woken by Maggie (the cat… Ha!) having the worst spate of the pukes ever. Anyway, despite my overtiredness, I’m actually having a pretty good day. Wish me luck with that. Please.

Executive Kibbeh

Corporate cruelty, stupidity, and downright obstinacy today have reached a new peak (at least, here at work). The deal is, we are having the winter blizzard to beat all blizzards. At first, we were supposed to get about nine inches of snow. When the deluge had started, around nine, they downgraded to six inches. By noon, the weather service was saying 11, and now it’s 14-15 inches. The latest posting by the County Mounties reads that roads in Madison, WI are completely impassable. And management won’t let us go early. Basically, we’re f@#$ed. If I have to stay here tonight, I’m going to kill at least one executive to eat. It’ll be very Lord of the Flies, only I won’t call the bastard anything quite so nice as pig, even though it’s harder to rhyme appropriate epithets with “bash it in”.

Last night, I made the rest of my sexy kibbeh substitute into a meatloaf after frying about a burger’s portion-worth and serving with homemade potato wedges. We’ll see how the sexy shit holds up as ‘loaf tomorrow for lunch, if I’m eating anything other than microwaved exec by that time. Hmm… Makes me think. I wish to god I had my Vietnamese Cassia cinnamon with me. It might help make middle-aged, gamey, stringy, over-marbled meat more palatable. The stuff certainly works with hamburger!

I don't have pneumonia, but I'm overdosing on Jesus...

OK, here's the deal. Last weekend, I started feeling a little down in the dumps. My true one-year anniversary (measured from the time that Orpheus and I started dating officially), was spent partially apart, and partially at a friend's house over a bad dinner. I was sick yesterday, and went to the doctor, as I had started to feel like my lungs were clouding, just like the time I came down with walking pneumonia. Turns out, it's just a horrible, horrible cold. O. was kind of sick of me by the time I dropped him off yesterday, which made me a little testy today. Now I'm watching 'Jesus Camp', which is just the most horribly depressing movie ever. I want to go to bed, wake up rich, jobless, yet still insured, and never have to worry about anything fiscal ever again. Also, I want to shut every single evangelical wrong-head up in the center of the country, walled off, and let them eat each other instead of me. I'm so sick with other people's mental illness right now I could vomit, and I can barely breathe because of my own more real afflictions. And there's a red-faced freak on my TV screen talking about how all the answers are in the bible. Fine. Go shit outside the city walls, assholes. I'm going to the bathroom INSIDE my apartment, and flushing my bile on the internet.