I woke up to a pretty sunrise, pretty the way the sunrises are here in this piece of the Midwest; broad, shallow, pale. The attic windows face east. The morning train runs west to east, or, I suppose vice versa, though you see and hear that less often. It was six degrees below zero when the sunrise made its subtle almost humble entrance.
I have things to do today, intense things, albeit I expect the meetings to be gentle. I sort of like the idea that it’s so bitter cold out, that the snow drifts are still so high. I think the summer will harsh; all this extra moisture will be good for the crops and the skeeters. The first summer I came back was a drought. Deer were dying or committing suicide by car as the leafy green they eat was brown and crumpled.
A harsh summer here is so much worse than a harsh winter, swampy, buggy, muggy. Over the years in various journals I’ve talked about movies I snuck into as a kid. Of all the movies I’ve seen the first run of in the theater; I’d say ninety percent were released in the summer. My first few years in Portland we lived downtown and didn’t have a car. About eight blocks from our A/Cless apartment was a movie theatre that played, almost exclusively, James Bond and Thin man movies. A buck to get in the door and cool, cool, A/C and you could stay all day. Yes, there were four other theaters close by; it was downtown Portland, but most of them were more than a buck and if an usher were paying attention you had to clear out after the show.
My first meeting is with the guys on the Memory unit, the permanent placement I’m arranging for my father. I also have to figure out how to get furniture, whether to get a hospital bed or just a bed bed, chairs, end tables, that sort of thing. The next meeting is with the rehab people who will blow some smoke up my ass and then insist my dad will be ready to graduate in a few days. It’s not much of a miracle; physically he’s capable of a lot more than he actually does. Doesn’t matter, they’ll kick him lose anyhow and the memory unit will take him anyhow.
Then I have what will amount to a day off, then Wednesday most of the day at the eye doctor while they try to get in another three tests for my mom who will have cataract surgery on her other eye in May. The eye doctor is pretty weird, he has no social skills, it’s like having Monk as an eye doctor or perhaps that fucking robot who was always squawking “Danger Will Robinson!” He is, however, a very good eye doctor. I don’t have to sleep with him or play poker with him or go for a long drive in the country with him and so his people skills mean little to me. He’s either very good at poker or doesn’t play. I mean he has a good face for the game but I’m not sure he could manage the sitting around a table with other people.
The county cancelled my daughter’s second interview. Nobody knows whether that is good, bad or indifferent. My pep talk was “Telling you that you didn’t get the job is bad, cancelling the interview is not the same thing. Probably.” There is an implied What The Fuck Do I know.
Sometimes men and women get into this silly fight “You never tell me you love me anymore” “It’s always implied, do you think I don’t love you?” “That’s not my point.” “Yes, but it’s mine.” Sometimes that’s a silly fight, sometimes it’s a big package of bullshit and white lies. I keep all that much simpler, I love you and What the Fuck Do I know should always be implied until I tell you otherwise, and I will. Um, sometimes when I do tell someone otherwise they can’t quite wrap their heads around it. I mean the part when I tell someone what the fuck I know. The I love/don’t love really shouldn’t ever come as a surprise to anyone.
My heart and my trust are pretty simple and easy to obtain; once. Betray it and there is no second chance, or there wasn’t until the last wife. Those second chances didn’t work out well. It was an experiment for my heart, it ended badly. I’m just saying for the most part I am an all-day sucker and, um, if you’ll pardon the analogy, as long as you keep sucking I’ll be a fine flavored hard candy. Hmmm, well, not you. Serial monogamist here, but the you in theory. Hmmm, the theoretical you is a stronger phrase English-language-wise, but you probably don’t think of yourself as theoretical at all, I might be, the entire universe might be, but you, you’re convinced you are empirical. Everyone else might be silly rabbits or kids, but you, maestro, you are the trix. You think therefore you is, the rest of us bozo’s might just be props.
Yes, I am just chewing on time. I’d be preparing for shit, but just showing up is really all the preparation I need. It’s been three months since I’ve smoked an analog cigarette. A few days ago I did sort of jones for one, but not very intensely and it passed without me having to go through a litany of why I shouldn’t. I do occasionally look wistfully at all my cigars and pipe tobacco, but I don’t jones for them. My life here has an entire hierarchy of jonesing, yet analog cigs is somewhere near the bottom, either taking a smoke break or mixing mortar. If my sole reason for quitting was to live longer I’d be chain smoking at this very minute.
The closest thing to an empirical reason for quitting that I have is my love of gadgets. Vaping is all gadget. I have noticed I do that static electricity thing a lot more often even in places where it shouldn’t work. You know what I mean, you did it as a kid; rub your fuzzy socks real fast on the carpet and then touch your little sister or brother on the back of the neck and a little spark shocks him or her. Happened to me yesterday in snow deep high tops, gloves, and touching my car door. I had two batteries (PV’s) in my shirt pocket and a replacement 16350 2200mA in my pants pocket. It’s a little weird ass battery for a PV, the 16650 is a bigger one and can go higher in the milliamperage. I’m just saying I’ve been making those little sparks all over the place.
I’d be lying if I started listing all the wonderful things I’d been missing out on by smoking analogs. An enhanced sense of taste (or more like a sense of taste returning to normal) would be a plus if the cuisine around here wasn’t so very, I don’t know, common, or, if I wasn’t so very used to tasting things when I was analog smoking. Oh, that was the worst thing about the gum. Usually eating makes you want a cigarette immediately afterwards or sometimes during. The gum is supposed to be for whenever you have a craving. The gum dissolves or does other weird shit if you just ate or drank. Means you can’t have it with morning coffee or evening cocktails; all real triggers for a smoke.
The big plus I’ve noticed is a sort of an odd one. I’ve been using a tongue scraper for years, even blamed the coating on my tongue on coffee (I went on a pu-erh kick for over a year because of the coffee/tongue connection). Guess it was mostly tobacco tar. Um, it’s not like I use my tongue for much, or not much I’m going to divulge here, but it feels nice. I mean not having a coating, though what I’m not divulging feels nice too, that’s not what I meant. Pervs.
So yeah, couple hours I’m making dad arrangements. In general I’m not sure these are the best arrangements, specifically they are pretty fucking A good though. I’m ok with doing 99 percent of the decisions on my own, somethings I prefer that way; this is one of them, though I’ve never quite been here before. Some things I’d much rather share the blame or the glory or, really, consequences, with as many people as possible. I’d much rather be patting someone on the back and telling them they did the best they could, than I would switching places.
And I’m spent.
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