Of course, I've had endless time to write stuff here, to update or explain or apologize or excuse .... But for right now I have an hour.
So it will be the usual scattershot approach.
"Scattershot" might be appropriate. I'm considering applying to run the cash register at a gun shop. The wife of the owner checks me in for my fingerprick sessions to test my blood thinner and has mentioned a couple of times her husband needs someone new there. The first time we mentioned it to Dour, who has an NRA bumpersticker on his car along with the quote from The Holy Grail about the holy hand grenade. But he hadn't run out of money by then and wasn't interested. Doesn't want to run a cash register again either. The gunman's wife (good name for a detective novel with racy overtones, eh?) said last week hubby had hired someone who now has a second job going full time and is quitting.
It may have come to that. Might make for some interesting research for a novel.
Time, of course, is running out on getting my writing career started. Anyone want to read my racy novel about the city boy and country step-cousin? Last I recall, I had done the latest rewrite. Or maybe I'm in the middle of it still.
I had an interview Friday before last with a company related to my last employer, but a far better job (though not a lot more pay). I thought I came off well, and had an immediate second interview. The trouble, I think, was the second interviewer was the boss of the one who runs the particular operation, so, I was told, the one making the decision was on vacation and would work from the notes the boss was taking.
I figured that might be trouble. I had put my app in the day the job was posted and got the interview the next day. The rest of the applicants to be interviewed were to be the next week, after the immediate boss returned. So I would be the only one not interviewing with her. Sure enough, I got a call yesterday: Sorry, sucker!
My job situation has me split to the point of paralysis. (So what else is new?) I really should be building back my legal writing business, but I really need immediate regular work to contibute to living expenses. So I'm putting out effort along both lines, mostly the latter.
I suppose my greatest energy has gone into (a) bicycling, and (b) arguing with Candi about (a). A beneficial effect has been she has exercised much more than she likely would otherwise. Hearing that I am going on a ride after dropping her off at work or have taken one spurs her to protest that she thought we were going for a ride after work. Um, no, there had been no mention of that, but, sure, I would go for another ride at the sort of pace she goes.
Oh, but I couldn't possibly ride a second time in a day, even several hours apart, without surely dying. Or else the ride earlier in the day surely will make me unable to perform in bed that night, which, though we hadn't really agreed to on the particular day, having done it the one or two days before, she expects, now that she has a reason to claim I won't be able to perform.
Mostly I tell her the truth about my riding two or three times a week on my own, but I am tending toward not telling her unless she calls during a ride, when there is traffic noise--she has a talent for calling when the background sound reveals I'm not at home.
Last Friday, I think it was, I put in 24 miles over mostly flat trails but also with some considerable hills. She knew I was going, as I'd hooked the bike on the car in the morning. She gave birth to cow triplets, it seemed, objecting when I told her the distance. It was a very nice and cool day, which we'd been having all last week. Lovely ride and I broke a sweat only on the couple of hills. Her main concern was with my performance potential. We screwed on Saturday instead of Friday, and it was just find.
Sunday and Monday we both rode on flat trails, going 13 miles Sunday afternoon and 12 miles after work Monday night. She insisted on Monday night before we went to work, obviously to stave me off from a solo ride during the day. Very nice.
Tuesday I dropped her off, did a little job search stuff, then hooked on the bike and went to a nearby trailhead that connects to many miles of creekside trails. I went 25 miles. At three miles out from the end, I was feeling the return of the sun and the heat. I had 1.5 liters of electrolyte water, but was a bit dizzy, even on the flat.
Then Candi called, when I was right beside a busy street. I truthfully said I was on a ride and exactly where I was at the time, but fudged the distance. I said I had just turned around at 3 miles out, making it a 6 mile trip. Nope, I'd turned around at 12.5, with 3 left. I never said a word then or later about an problems. (She is always asking if I "had any problem," but always means it sexually, meaning, "Did you jerk off today?")
That got her off the phone and I pedaled back to the car, stopping a couple of times to respond to texts. But also stopping because I was struggling. Probably the actual problem was I'd forgotten to take my heart medicine (3 times a day) Monday before bed, so that was low in my bloodstream during the ride though I took the morning pill.
I made it back to the car, and sat for awhile before loading the bike, letting the chest pounding go away. Back home I came up the stairs to the second-floor apartment and at the top felt about to pass out. My legs were wobbling and my vision was whiting out. But made it in and it went away.
Of course, her main concern about the ride was I wasn't going to be able to get it up and get off that night. I had that same concern. My pee, despite all the water, was very dark yellow. But after supper, I rallied in bed and did quite well, even taking less time than average. (It might have helped that, at her suggestion, we had a porn movie going, and the scenes featured particularly non-plastic and apparently enthusiastic ladies.)
Hey, this had been only half an hour so far.
This morning Candi seemed to start back in about my riding the bike. Going to be too hot today (true). But she kind of angled off after she said she was only upset yesterday about my not telling her I was going to ride. I said she punishes me for saying I'm going to ride. She barrages me with texts and calls and criticism, etc. She said she wants us to go tonight after it cools off. I pointed out she seems to want to do that only to make it look like I'm leaving her out of something fun, which is the great horror theme of her life from childhood. After she got to work she made this texted concession: "I was just trying to tell you that I understand you need to get out and ride." She just wants me to let her know and do it when it's cool.
Ok, works for me.
The weekend before last we went to visit my daughter and family at their new home a couple of hours away. Candi was petulant and said he needed to take her niece and nephew because I would just talk to my daughter and son-in-law and everyone would ignore her, then she complained about having to watch the kids.
Anyway, she said we ought to visit again this weekend, though without kids, before we recalled we have free tickets to a play. And she wants to put together one of her family outings in celebration of my birthday Monday. She asked where I want to go Sunday for that. I said I don't care, knowing there are only two places her mom would want to go.
But then her mom wants another place and her sister is saying that is a bad choice. Sis and mom have been fighting since Candi's uncle died early last week.
The way I read what happened is when Uncle Jack was said a week earlier to be on the brink of death, we all flooded in for the day and sis and mom went into crying hysterics. Then Jack woke up. Not coherent entirely, but immediate crisis passed. Still, he had been put on "comfort care." (Cancer that had spread pretty much everywhere, and organs shutting down.)
This twilight went on for a few days, then the next Tuesday I was again taking Candi to work when we got a call that Jack had died. We picked up Sis and went to the hospital. Mom was already there, as was the rather numb and calm new widow. Before mom had a chance to barely speak, Sis when into hysterics and pretty much kept it up for the next couple of hours, pausing when clergy and staff and the like came in. Mom was soothing Sis, but I could tell from mom's expression she didn't like this upstaging. She had said some time before to Candi that Jack was her brother, so she was obviously more upset about the illness than nieces could be.
It was later the same day that Sis and Mom lit into one other, Mom going first. They calmed down, then a day or two later it started back. Now Sis was lashing out at Candi too.
Here's a weird thing about all this: After the grandma died a year before, Mom had used some of the money she was managing for the estate to buy a bench at the cemetary where grannie's ashes were being interred in a wall next to her husband.
A bend. It has spaces in it to put ashes for something like six people. The rest of the family still living was offered space. Jack has been cremated and he will go there.
In a bench. That is placed so you can sit on it and face the wall where the grandparents are, along with a great-grandma.
There's another reason never to marry this woman. If I do, I might get benched.
I'm sure there's a lot more to write about to catch up.
Oh, I found a guitar leaning against a dumpster the other day. I good shape. Not a great brand, but it sounds okay. I took off a lot of dust and tuned it and played a little out on the porch, while Candi listened. I think it is the first time she's heard me play guitar, though I have a better one in a case in the closet. I play piano better, but it's been quite awhile since I've played that either. I have this storyline in my head about a character like me finding a guitar like this and being inspired to turn his life around, throw off his self-imposed or tolerate shackles, and letting his creative side shine. Yadda yadda.
But then I have a lot of great story ideas. Whole plots that burst up from some small inspiration, where I see the whole story from start to finish. And then don't do a damn thing about it.
Well, hour's up. Time to go after Candi.
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