The Evils of Daydreaming, Gambling, Using the Internet, and Other Social Sins

As the Powerball Lottery in my geographic region just went over $400M, I again started to daydream about winning that shit.  I bought a single ticket, because my chance is just as good as any other person’s chance.  And on Sunday we sang a praise song about how nothing on Earth is quite as good as anything in Heaven.  The message from the song was clear, the message from our pastor was clear, and in my notes I wrote it:  “Faith in God makes your perspective about our earthly struggles much clearer, but it doesn’t do shit about fixing them. You have to muddle through just like everyone else.”  Struggles, he might have just as well said problems, frustrations, disappointments,  pain, or whatever other “big picture” word you can pick.

On Friday night, I rested my sore ass after working hard all week at this same shit job, and doing a half-assed job with house work, because my back was twitching and unmedicated.  Literally, I hurt from back to legs, just enough to twitch when I tried to stand and walk.  And that’s just truth, not a complaint.  I endured, and that’s not a complaint either.  I’ll explain in a second.

At least I’m not a plumber, because then my shit job would be a literal shit job.  I don’t mind dealing with my family’s shit, but I really don’t want to deal with a world of shit.  So, I celebrated my tiny shit job ending for the week, and had a tall glass of lemonade while wishing my back would stop hurting.  If I had copay money, I might know a good chiropractor, but instead I tried stretching and waiting, because it’s cheaper.  On Saturday, I mowed a half-acre of grass and did some volunteer work, the completion of which were their own reward.  And I drove home from these tasks, took a hot shower, and rested my sore ass.  This time I had grape kool-aid, because we had finished the lemonade and I got to choose.  There’s still my quarter-acre and the other half of mum’s acre, so 3/4 acres to mow this week if I can fit it in.  And, at least I’m not a landscaper or mowing service, because having it as a job means that’s got to be done to earn money, and it was too hot to do anything Sunday.  Imagine being out in the hot sun all summer long and then, when the landscape business dries up with the spring and summer rains, you do something else to earn money I guess.  Engine repair, sharpening lawn mower blades… (“Mmm hmm…,” brain flashed back to Sling Blade’s Billy Bob Thornton character), driving a snowplow and hoping for snow, vs. the rest of us, wary commuters who are hoping the snow and ice only falls on the dormant grass and not the streets, sidewalks and driveways.

It’s barely summer, just getting hot enough to notice.  So, I’m still mowing grass, not shoveling snow.  I recall in prior, winter storms, when the snowplow played an amusing game with me.  I’d diligently shovel my driveway and sidewalk, and the plow would barrel down the street when I finished, and pile that shit off the street and onto my driveway and sidewalk.  Only the second round was packed down, and usually icy, so if I didn’t go right back out and shovel again, it would freeze and make my driveway worse than before I shoveled the first time.  I say, “amusing.”  I mean, something else.

And you know, with my personal mental issues, that in the moment of having to do the thing I just spent the time getting done right, a-fucking-gain, I was not particularly celebrating the opportunity.   I mean, I get cranky when my kids don’t do shit, which is all the time, I get frustrated when my wife doesn’t do shit I want her to do, which is all the time, and I get a good rage on when I do something and it falls apart and makes me repeat the process.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Tie my shoestrings, I knot the damned things and I’m still walking on sunshine the damned strings by the end of the day.  Bless my heart, my feet are different sizes, profoundly so, and I therefore can’t wear slip on shoes, they just fall off.   And I re-tie my shoestrings again.

Guess what?  The nature of life, I’m told, is that things routinely happen to cause people to have to, for example, re-tie their shoes, or re-wash a dish that accidently shifts from strainer to soapy water, or re-vacuum or mop a floor someone tracks dirt deposits on.  Well, to turn an urban phrase, “I ain’t down wit dat.”  I don’t even want to do it the first time, do NOT make me have to do it twice.  Or three times.  Imagine my consternation with throwing something in a straight line to the trash, from a foot away, and missing.  Three times.  I stand, my back hurts.  I bend.  My back hurts.  I pick it up.  I hover over the trash, release, it sticks to my finger the first time and misses.  The second time it hits the rim, and misses.  FUCK!  I mean, you can laugh, but my back hurts.

We are supposed to struggle, says my pastor.  Well, fuck that.  I get to a point struggling when I am broken, quicker than your average schmuck, and I want to quit.  We are supposed to endure.  I have that down to a science.  And yet, fuck that too.  I know he’s telling us the truth, but I don’t want it to be that way.  I don’t like being broken.  I don’t like struggling.  It’s most often not worth the reward I receive for struggling, at least not in this life.  He never did get around to telling us WHY we’re supposed to struggle and endure.  I do it for Mrs M and the kids.  I do it for a select few of my readers, you know who you are.  And I do it as a matter of personal satisfaction.  And maybe that’s the point.  “…patient [fucking] endurance…” (I just misappropriated Revelation 14:12, if you’re keeping score.)

My church seems to really have an issue with what I do with my money.  I watched my tithe check go into the offering plate, written by the lovely hand of Mrs. M. herself.  I need to mention it, because I know some people love to walk in smug self-righteousness, stand in the crowd of the proud holier-than-thou people, and sit in judgement. (I just appropriated Psalm 1:1, if you’re keeping score.)  Anyway, at the risk of inflating my pride, my “widow’s mite” of a tithe went in, not that it was very much.  But my $2 went for a lottery ticket, because there is a chance.  I myself took a dim view of the lady who claimed to have spent the month’s rent payment on lottery tickets back when it was a billion dollars.  Because that’s just dumb, even if it IS a billion dollars, what do you do when you don’t win?  Your landlord still wants that money.  Rumor has it she tried to crowd-fund, and almost got away with that except that she implied she’d do it all over again and this wasn’t a one-time impulsive dumb mistake that she learned from.

My bills have to get paid. Even the ones I rescued from a random box Mrs M stuck them in, in an effort to clean house, or in an effort to forget them.  I…. don’tunderSTAND!

I …don’tunderstand!!

I like a clean house, don’t get me wrong, but don’t lose the house while you’re putting things “away.”  “Away” is not in a random box you plan to sort through when you get around to it.  The bill collectors do not care that you don’t know where it is or how much you owe, they just want to get paid.  “Patient [fucking] endurance.” (that’s two)  On the plus side, I found the fucking bill and put it somewhere it might be found in time to pay it.

Anyway, the point is, I try to be responsible with money, and get the bills paid as well as I can, and then I keep a tiny reserve of a few bucks a week to spend, sometimes.  Or give to the kids if they need a little money.  I don’t go out to eat, so I might buy a lottery ticket if the jackpot is ridiculously high.  Which is to say, anything over a few hundred million.  So yes, if you keep score, I wasted $2 last week, because my numbers were not drawn.  I’m wasting another $2 this week, unless I win, in which case you’ll change your tune and call it “investing.”  And bet me that even those sanctimonious, richer-than-thou pricks who caught lucky breaks and make boatloads of cash more than me, will turn from their pious down-nose-gazing judgement and be all chummy with me if I do.  And watch their stunned faces when I tell them to fuck off.  Along with the richie-riches who didn’t help me when I humiliated myself and asked them for help.  And the ass holes who put the shit on my credit report, not during the big financial crisis that led to the above humiliation, but after I worked my sore ass off and paid a little of that shit off, will be charged at least 30% interest if they want to borrow from me.  It’s almost as good as they offered, the bastards.

And the ones who actually DID help me will be paid back with interest, or given a gift and they’ll have to figure out what to do with it.

But yeah, gambling is evil, if it’s your addiction.  It’s not mine, because 1) the house always wins; and 2) I can’t afford to be compulsive about it; and 3) if I had the cash, I wouldn’t feel the need to take a chance on more.  Why would you bother?  I wouldn’t go to Vegas if you paid my ticket, room and board.  Because people lose their asses out there.  “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas[, and it keeps your assets there with it].”  If you throw your rent money, or your food money, at your bookie, that’s a problem and you’re going to have a bad time.

Speaking of time, I suppose it is fitting to confess, I’ve daydreamed about the lottery a few times.  Enough to plan a few things when I actually do win.  You’ll know it’s me from the dental implants, the practical, fuel efficient car, the ridiculous swag I give Mrs. M., the diligence to wrap up details I feel responsible for before quitting my shit job, and the gentle, non-bridge-burning ways I distance myself from certain people.  And the way I disappear from view, unless someone who cared about me when I was poverty-stricken needs something.  This, however, is a waste of time because I haven’t won yet.  Who knows what I could have accomplished, if I had harnessed that time in practical pursuits.

There will be wasted money if I win, but not a whole lot of it.  I’ll indulge, because I’ll be able to.

I was a little startled this morning when I went online from work, on the “guest browser” internet access.  The provider (not even my company, because the tightwads refuse to offer bandwidth to guest users from the company who are at lunch), refused to connect me to the lottery website and said the reason my request was filtered was “gambling.”  So I went on Twitter and found my answer there, stupid ass holes!  As an employee, I should be allowed to check on break or at lunch if I can quit my job, using bandwidth provided by my employer.  The only reason to not allow it is for people who will abuse it, so I get that.  As a guest browsing on your bandwidth, as a non-employee, what’s the reason behind filtering out the lottery website?  I should be allowed to check if someone won, just browsing as a guest.  I don’t get that one at all.  Unless you’re one of those holier-than-thou judges and you believe you’re protecting me from myself.  I’m a big boy now, and I don’t have mommy or daddy hovering over me while I take my chances at life, and I don’t need to be prevented from seeing if the lottery jackpot suddenly went down, so I can know whether to bother checking my ticket on the way home after working my sore ass off all day.

There are both practical and recreational uses for the internet, and we all know there is a lighter side to both, and naturally a darker side.  Farbeit from me to judge how you recreationally or occupationally use the internet.  You may well judge me if I “cast a stone. (Matthew 7 1-3, and John 8:7, scorekeepers)”  I recommend the lighter side, but I’m not going to stop you.  I know a certain blogger who knowing he’ll probably never meet anyone from the internet, has been known to casually be flirtatious.  He’s an ass, but intends no harm.  But if that’s sin, then that sin is out there for all to see, just like any other sinner’s “sin.”  I wonder if I’d use the internet more, or less, or differently if I won the jackpot and were free to do whatever I wanted.  I hope I’d work on my books and my blogs more.  But I can’t predict that; I can only hope.  There but for not having enough free time I might be the guy everyone looks down on for “sinful” internet activities.  You can’t do those things at work, because 1) eww; and 2) I don’t even know what that would be filtered as; and 3) even the lighter side of internet distraction gets filtered by my work computer as “entertainment.”  You can’t even do THAT at work, much less anything  “worse.”

In my bunker, guests can do what I can afford to let them do.  Have a beverage or a few, rest and recharge, carry on harmless flirtation, hide from the zombies, sharpen your z-whackers, practice your marksmanship.  Stay for dinner, stay for breakfast, in your own warm comfortable bed, by yourself, guarded by my lack of any real intention and Mrs M’s heretofore un-tested-but-surely-insane jealousy.  I don’t favor the commitment of crime, so you probably should do that in someone else’s bunker if that’s what you like to do.

When I win the lottery, that fucking bunker is getting built in a non-virtual, very secret and undisclosed location, by invitation only.  “And in the morning, ”
See?  I told you I was an ass.  But because I didn’t win yet, this past weekend, and I feel I need another shot at it, I’m going to waste another $2 tonight.  Just in case someone is still keeping score.  And when I win, quite a few of my daydreams will have to be prioritized and accomplished, because I do habitually daydream.  It’s cheaper than buying something.  I can’t afford to buy much right now, but when I can, I just might.  I hope I’m not compulsive, but deliberate and thoughtful.

Do I need this, want this, or is it a stupid impulse I’ll regret later?  Or, if I bought this and gave it to someone, would it be a blessing, or a waste?  I think those principles will make an excellent guideline for me when I win.  It’s funny, for all the judgement I hear from people who don’t participate moderately and conservatively in social sins, I don’t get enraged at having to buy another lottery ticket or at losing yet another $2 if I could afford to spend it and had it in my wallet and went to the store.  And sure, it’s probably a stupid impulse I’d regret if not for the happy daydream that chance buys.  Will I regret winning?  I’ll let you know, but I doubt it.  With the knowledge that gambling is viewed as a sin, I bet I’ll finally find out if that song is right.

Speaking of social sins, yesterday was so damned hot, that while I was outside doing yard work, I had a cold beer.  And when I finished working outside a few hours later, I had ANOTHER cold beer to cool off, and then a nice hot shower, and then fell into a nice restful sleep.  It brings me to this morning.  This morning, I did a stretch and felt my back adjust, and it took me a few minutes to realize my back wasn’t aching as bad.  So there’s another blessing.  Despite not winning the weekends’ drawing, I really did have a little “thank-you-God” party when my back popped.  On Sunday, I felt VERY blessed to have those cold beverages in my fridge, and even moreso when my back popped to correct itself. this morning.  If it hadn’t, I’d have figured out how to hobble to the car and drive my sore ass to work.  If I hadn’t had those beverages, then probably ibuprofen and more grape kool-aid, because it’s just good-tasting.  Since I had them, though, I’m probably bordering on alcoholism, if you’re keeping score of all my “sins.”  I’ve probably got several others if you are as perfect as the judgemental set are.
But so far, lying isn’t really one of the sins you can charge me with very much.

I really am making waffles on the day after I find out I’ve won the lottery.  The best damned waffles, EVER.

Sounds Funny but Not Funny

Oh, it’s not all THAT bad.  But I felt it earlier in the week.  There were two very stressful episodes at work, one where the systems didn’t work badly enough to upset me, and one episode just yesterday with the dog.

When I take the dog for a walk, I anticipate he’s going to take care of whatever business he needs to take care of.  So, I took him for a walk, and he did what he was going to do, and we came back inside.  There was some pulling at the leash, which I regard as non-compliance and I stop moving.  When he went in the direction I wanted to go, we were fine, I thought.  And then he ran up our stairs, so I tried putting him in his kennel.  I didn’t check both door locks, so he of course got out, and ran up our stairway to find out if the kids were in their rooms, and they had gone to school for the day.  Since he didn’t shit outside, I anticipated he might try to go in the house.  I set him up in the bathroom (easy to clean the floor) with paper down just in case, and set the kennel in front of the door so he could have that much more room.

All it did was give him a running start.  He jumped over the kennel, and ran upstairs to impress me with his Houdini-worthy skill.  I was on the phone with a client, and he stood there wanting me to take him outside to shit, and I couldn’t put the customer and the tech support people both on hold, so I sat and helplessly watched as he shit on my carpet.  Just.  FUCK!  Oh. Sorry, seems that SHIT would be a more appropriate expletive.  Laugh, laugh, ha, ha, readers.  But I am sick to fucking death of LIFE adding MORE WORK for me to take care of because I exist, and adding unnecessary shit to my life that I have to deal with later because the dog couldn’t be arsed to do it while he was outside, and couldn’t be arsed to do it while in the safe confines of the bathroom, and I have no time or margin to deal with the shit when it happens, so I have to save up time and money and energy to handle it later.

Time, money, and energy are the frayed margins of my life, for which I desperately need significant repair.  But every time I pray for margin, more gets cut off the frayed edge, so I don’t ask any more.  And while it’s not true that my time is money, it is true that more money would buy me more time.  If I had more money, I could just call the guy when the plumbing needs work, instead of trying to do it myself, fucking it up, and then calling the guy.  Which doesn’t happen as often any more, since I’ve done that enough to learn a few things.  If I had more money, I could just pay the bills and not worry about bill collectors, overdraft notices, car repairs, the insurance bump whenever dear daughter starts driving… don’t remind me.

If I had more time, I might invest some of that in resting.  But so far, whenever I “have more time,” the dog needs something, the daughter needs something, the son needs something, or the wife expected me to have already spent that time doing something else.  If I choose to not invest that time in the expected shit shoveling for whichever demanding person demands it, a) the wife just shakes her head, does one of those life-draining sighs of exasperation and starts doing whatever she thought I should have done already, or fixing whatever part of it wasn’t complete, in the expectation that I will muster the energy to take over and handle it.  Sometimes, I can pull it together.  Not always. b) the daughter screams about how I don’t care, nobody cares,  nobody likes her, and she can’t do it because she has homework/social engagement/exhaustion/insert-other-manufactured-excuse; c) the son almost finishes and then disappears into the darkness of his room and his electronic device(s); d)the dog just stares and expects another treat for not doing shit.  Or for doing shit wherever he damn well decides to.

He has a spot he likes to go, to do his business.  When I have time, not a problem.  When I don’t, I want him to learn to go where I want him to go.  I didn’t think I had time to get there and back, so  didn’t take him, so he shit on my carpet because the bare, easy to clean bathroom floor didn’t have the same grass-like appeal as my grey carpet.  He can’t see anything but black and white, maybe the carpet looks or feels comfortable like grass, but for fucks sake, it’s not shag.  It’s not even plush.  It’s another one of the things I should replace because it’s gross.  The last time I tried to rent a shampooer, it did a shit job, and I can’t blame it all on the shampooer, because the carpet is so old.  The carpet is almost as old as some of the stains on it, or possibly the reverse.  Who can be sure?.  We bought the carpet with the house, back when we had money, time, and hope.  Well now there’s another one, but I’m working on getting that out before it becomes set and older than the dog.  I’m not replacing the carpet until the dog is trained properly, which probably means I’ll replace the carpet and then the dog will forget his training and shit on the new one.  Which begs the question- does carpet come in exactly matched shades of shit brown?  Oh, wait, there’s also food stains and drink stains…  Maybe I’ll have to go with an out-of-fashion camouflage and random colors-print carpet, something like one of the busier, less orderly  Kandinsky-patterns.  Some people like Wassily, and …then there’s me.  Because to me, the paintings reflect the stress of trying to produce a sufficient number of quality pieces of art in the time available, trying to sell them quick enough to earn a decent living, and fail.  But then, maybe I’m projecting myself onto Kandinsky.  Or maybe I’m right, maybe he hates that, and that’s why I don’t really like his work.

Yesterday I ventured forth to the store to return something my wife thought I should easily be able to install.  My faux extroversion knows no limits.  First, when the installation went south, I swore (naturally).  And then I set it aside to wait and see if Mrs M would fare any better guiding dowel A into insertion point B.  It’s just a hanging thing, and one essential piece at the end wouldn’t go into where it was supposed to go, and “click.”  Did I ever mention that I hate house projects, and “easy-to-install” bullshit.  (…You’d think I’d be an expert at putting round peg a into slot b.  Alas, no, I clearly need more practice.  Someone tell Mrs. M, please!)  Thank GOD, she couldn’t get dowel A to click into insertion point B either.  (which can only mean that she needs more practice too.)  The second thing I did is to call the company who was dumb enough to print their toll-free number on the instructions.

I called, and the first lady I got said I couldn’t have a new round peg. I’d have to box the entire thing up and return it to the store, or call her corporate office.  I forgot her name.  She was nice, and even sounded like she was familiar with the very defect I was talking about, but still…  So I called toll-free number 2, who sent a request to the local store manager.  The store manager called me and said he’d take care of everything, and he did, at least, if dowel A’ successfully attaches to insertion point B’.  But I did have to box up most of the defective thing so they could return it to their manufacturer.   Anyway, returned it, exchanged for hope, and went back home barely in time for work.  Today I got that out of the box and the same damned peg in the new box wouldn’t screw and lock correctly into the insertion point of the piece of shit, made in China, from the new box.  Ugh.  The easiest sounding things are too much work.  The easiest sounding things are never easy; they just seem to add more pressure to what’s already too much.  The simplest things are too complicated and too hard to figure out, and too stress-filled.

I’m a simple thing.  (Or maybe, simple minded.)  I literally worried on the way home that I might get hit by someone and be late for work.  Heaven forbid. This is how much I hate drastic change and don’t want to be an inconvenience or a burden to anyone else.  I want to be helpful, in a world where so many people seem hell-bent on fucking it up for me and everyone else.  I very briefly thought to myself, it might have been a mercy.  Like driving off into the retention pond.  But no, see above, I resist such foolishnesses as they don’t fit- I don’t have the margin of time to deal with dying.  Or worse, not dying, and not having an excuse for why it took so long for me to not die.  I don’t really want to die.  I don’t have a preference for death over life, and I don’t have a workable plan.  I mean, life can turn around.  I’m waiting to see how it plays out, but I’m hoping it’s a decisive victory I can start enjoying at half-time, and not a game changing buzzer beater shot at the last second.  I’d much rather enjoy the journey than watch it suck as hard as possible and have to fight until the bitter fucking end.

More pressure -at lunch yesterday I remembered I was supposed to make chicken noodle soup because my daughter went to the dentist the day before (guess who got to take her, guess who was 3 whole fucking minutes late and whose daughter gave him unending grief about it all, including how fast I was trying to drive, and how I was stuck behind another, fairly slow-moving car or two the whole way and  how slow I was driving, and how we were going to be late, and how it was my fucking fault there was a string of cars between me and the door of the school and I didn’t feel comfortable just shoving around them, because I don’t drive a monster truck.  Oh, and how “[I] don’t care about [her,]” either.)  So I didn’t care but I made the chicken noodle soup and got back to my desk with exactly 48 seconds left of the hour.

But you made it back, you’re saying.  And you succeeded, you’re saying.  Well, I’ll admit, I didn’t die.  But that doesn’t mean that going into the store with an item to return after searching for the receipt and failing because it’s either in her purse at her workplace, or already out in the trash, wasn’t stressful.  I had so much time before work that I took the dog for a walk and had the presence of mind to lock him in his crate so he couldn’t escape and crap on my damned carpet again.  Which reminds me, there’s still the stain I have to try to get out of my carpet.  My life sounds funny, like one of those sit-coms you expect to resolve in 22 minutes.  But it’s not funny to live through.  Maybe in another year, after the cash windfall comes, I’ll look back and laugh.  Or maybe, I’ll remember what it felt like and be on a mission to help people who are struggling like I was back before the big lottery payouts started rolling in (what the hell, I can still hope just like the next guy) .

My dad is home from the hospital.  Nice of him to give mum a day of rest while she was sicker than he was, eh?  Both of them have this really tenacious, killer bronchitis that’s not quite pneumonia, just like my daughter has had for a month and a half.  I went to the hospital and spent time with him, and then when his dinner arrived I went to mums.  She was sleeping, so I started washing her dishes.  She heard me and got up.  I made her sit back down when she started coughing uncontrollably.  And I poured her some whiskey.  I wanted some for myself, but she lives across town and I needed to be able to get home before having to sleep anything off.  While she sipped and rested, I finished the dishes and mopped the cat hair, cat food, and other, off the kitchen floor.  I so wanted to do more, because her house is almost as bad as mine.  Or worse, since I know what to do with my own shit, it’s hers and dad’s and I don’t really know what to do with it all.

Mum, she just sat and sipped and stopped coughing for a bit.  I checked in today  and they are both doing better but they have the severe bronchitis same as my daughter.  If you want to avoid a fight with someone, start cooking or cleaning for them and listen while they shut up.  Recalling this, I invaded the sanctity of the maelstrom in my daughter’s room yesterday and made her bed for her.  She was so happy, she took a nap after school, which made her feel even better.  But if I start doing any of those things and they keep bitching, I leave it for them to finish.

I may or may not have a bad habit of rage quitting.  It’s a gamer’s expression, but so fitting to my life.  Because fuck you if you’re not working to help me or staying out of the way, fuck you if you’re stressing me out as if it’s my fault, fuck you if you don’t appreciate it when I try to do nice things for you.  And fuck you if I’m not fast enough to satisfy your impatient bullshit.  With family, the best way I know how to do this still isn’t a good way.  Rage quit means I shut the fuck up, stop talking, finish what absolutely has to be finished, and leave the offenders in my dust.  Or their own fucking dust, if they made the mess I was trying to clean up.  I wish the solution was the same for work.  But no, I have to be a team player to claim I’m a team player and I work well on my own.  I can operate in both modes, but the team part is me faking well.  What I wish I could do is different.

At work, if someone fucks something up, I want to make them fix the damn thing and leave me the hell out of it.  And I want to wait patiently until they fix the shit, so I can do my job.  At work, if a tool I need isn’t working, I want to report the issue and wait until the tool is repaired and when it is repaired, step in and do my job.  But what I have to do instead, is sincerely apologize to our clients, and work that much harder to do what I can until it’s working, and then apologize again to the clients, and work that much harder to do what I couldn’t do until the company lets me play catch up.  If all of corporate America is on thin threads like this, maybe there’s a company out there hiring hack writers who retain their sense of humor, however grim and twisted it may become, in the face of adversity, stupidity, hypersensitivity, insecurity, and reinforced inferiority from all the people who demand I treat them with abject deference to their perceived self-superiority.  Ass holes!

I shredded paperwork dated anywhere from 2011 to 2015 yesterday, and I had two and a half trash bags full of shreds.  I ran across some interesting documents.  They showed us struggling financially, climaxing in 2013 and hovering near bankruptcy, leaving us stuck through about 2015, and we’ve been making slow progress getting out of the shit since then.  Thankfully, “for richer, for poorer” included “for poorer.”  The documents even showed us asking for help, and then there was the letter from one of the places we asked for help.  The letter reminded us that we had asked them for help a year and a half before, and how they counseled me then to “just” figure out how to make more money.  Great advice from great people.  I remember both visits.  I was humbled and discouraged going to them the first time. I left feeling completely humiliated and more depressed both times.  It was worse the second time, and then they added their letter of encouragement.  Thanks so much for the help.  I hope I never have to go back, and I hope no one else gets the same counseling advice from those rich fuckers.  I didn’t shred the letter.  I want a time in the future when I’m in a place to help one of these people and they’re placed in a position of need, and I share with them a) my experiences from 2012 to 2015 and how hard it still is now in 2017, AND their damned letter, b) Proverbs 3:27, and c) my blessings.  They have enough money that one of them could have fucking hired me to work for them for more than I earn now, and I would have worked my ass off to earn their pay.  Or, they could have hired me to work on staff for the organization-this was one of the places I already worked as a volunteer, and it would have been a dream job if the position matched my training, successful previous experience, and credentials.  But back then, I would have worked as a janitor, for fucks sake, and done a better job than the idiot who does a shit job cleaning for them still to this day.  Instead they gave us a one-time gift, which was helpful, once, and the second time we needed help they prayed for us and then told us to piss off and figure it out for ourselves.

This blog started, at least influenced, if not pushed to profanity, by those experiences and others, and my journey into discovery of why I am how I am was twistedly encouraged by them, so, do I owe them a debt of gratitude?  I think the answer from a human perspective is a a tiny yes for the gesture of the gift, and an emphatic “FUCK, NO,” for the way I felt during and after both experiences of humiliation, and for the consolation letter we received instead of help the second time, but I think if I ever have the money I’ll give them back their gifts with interest, and tell them to piss off and figure it out for themselves as to why I don’t really care if they make it or not.

So today, not that I want to do any of this, I remembered I have to get a Boy Scout physical, so I called the doctor and set that up.  I gave the person at the other end unnecessary grief, because of the last episode,that cost me $700, for the experiment I damned well knew the results of before the blood was wrestled from the perceived safety of my veins.  However, I asked how much it was going to cost me and the person was not forthcoming.  She mentioned a normal fee and then said that they don’t do copays for that, they submit it straight to my fucking cheap-ass insurance company, and then the insurance figures out how much they want to squeeze, how far they can elevate my blood pressure without actually killing me directly, now that I’ve lost a little weight and it’s gone down a little.

They charge me an extra hundred from each paycheck than they did before Obamacare, and they have yet to repeal it, so I’m more broke and even less able to afford any experimentation or equipment breakdown.  Yeah, and my income went up zero dollars to help me afford that insurance rate bump.  And I still have to pay copays for doctors and dentists, which is bullshit if I pay this much for healthcare coverage.  I’d go bankrupt if I ever had to go to the hospital like my dad did.  Because those rich fuckers always get their money, and they don’t really seem to give a shit how they’re getting it or what they’re putting people through to get it.  So if by some ill twist of fate I come up sick, I’ll just wait until I’m dead and check in to one of those really small rooms in the basement, that only have minimal amenities- no heat to pay extra for, no extra nursing care, and only one door that opens from the outside.  They don’t charge cadavers in the morgue.  Just the survivors.  If that fucking $700 bill for one tiny tube of blood is proof, evidently the insurance company thinks I earn a great income already!

And I do.  For someone who worked between 1910 and 1940.

Predictably Unpredictable

I don’t know what tomorrow or two days from then will bring.  I don’t even know if my mouse will leave the cursor where I want it to be, much less anything else.  There’s an instant unpredictability to life, and I’ve become intensely aware of how it adversely affects me.  I’m aware of how the major episodes and changes and issues boost my stress level.  Stress:  It’s quicker than a click away.  The touchpad needs to have a deonmon exorcised where it will occasionally just randomly migrate to the top right and just sit there no matter what I do using the touchpad.  So I have an auxiliary mouse plugged in using one of the few ports on it.  For a while something was bugging the keyboard too, so I had the second port occupied with an auxiliary keyboard.  all the baggage, the extra things to juggle, it adds stress, and even then, the mouse would randomly migrate and stick.  But the touchpad also randomly right-clicks itself.  The deonmon doesn’t want to leave my cursor where I put it, and will occasionally delete text I’ve just typed, which is bullshit for a random writer who isn’t being paid to write.  If I were being paid to write, I would have my publisher or employer buy me a better system, or, if I were being well-paid to write, I would buy a better system.  Alas, that requires genuine talent AND opportunity, and sadly, I have neither of these.

Lou Holtz is credited with saying “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”  I call that theory “interesting bullshit.” Evidently Holtz never watched Warner Brothers cartoons like Wile E. Coyote vs. the laws of physics and gravity or Daffy vs Bugs growing up. When the anvil lands, it’s the fucking load that breaks you down.

//giphy.com/embed/MxeYM5IduPqms

via GIPHY

And sometimes it feels like life’s shit all lands on you like an anvil in a cartoon, except it hurts and it DOES break you down. Fuck you, cockeyed optimists, get your eyes checked. The universe doesn’t hand you what you ask for or I’d have won the $7K a week for life PCH AND the $1B lottery back a while ago.

Sometimes it’s not so much an anvil, less painful but certainly demoralizing.  Maybe almost as bad as the anvil.

//giphy.com/embed/R1bw9sYyGt3Py

via GIPHY

There you are trying to work hard and handle the shit, doing life’s uphill climb, and look what happens.

Sometimes you are able to ignore the shit, work hard and get stuff done, and you feel like you might actually accomplish something and reach a good goal.  And sometimes all you can accomplish is surviving, and barely that.  Sometimes the job sucks, and sometimes it sucks harder.  Sometimes you hope for the promotion, and sometimes you just hope today won’t suck as bad as yesterday sucked.  Sometimes the boss pretends to care, and sometimes the truth is un-curtained, and the boss shoves your career down the bathroom plumbing.  It clogs, and then you have to plunger that away, because even though you know it stinks, the boss isn’t going to help with that shit.

My blog is two years old.

//giphy.com/embed/Oz0MVF2VZB1mw

via GIPHY

yay. (I wondered if I could find a Droopy cartoon gif that said “You know what? I’m happy.” But I remembered this one first so that’s what you get.  Kind of expresses the whole thing all at once- audience and blogger alike.)

The random nature of life means we don’t know if we’ll win the lottery or if we’ll die of cancer or if we’ll get a great job or be stuck in a dead end for 20 years and then have our retirement stolen, or if a new blogger we discover will be great, like my readers who blog, or if a blogger will suck.  (sorry!  And thanks for enduring these two years with me, or for not un-following if you’re a new reader.)

The random nature of life means I’ve had days that felt like cartoon anvils dropping.  They won’t kill you but they’ll feel like they might.  And I’ve had days where I actually believed stuff would work out in my favor.  It hasn’t yet, but isn’t hope just fucking adorable?  Hope keeps the lottery alive.  It’s misguided hope, but it’s hope.  Hope feels good, so let’s take it where we can.

I wasted invested a whole two dollars and bought a ticket now that it’s over $200M, knowing the odds.  I used to watch the interviews after people won.  “What are you going to do?” and not infrequently enough, I’d hear someone say “I’m going to fix my teeth.”  I heard it enough I used to kind of chuckle about it, and now, karma.  I couldn’t afford crowns so now they either come out and I get holes, or they come out and I get implants (sexy isn’t it?).  Fuck you, karma.  Sure the life-lesson is there, but do you have to teach ME?  So what will I do when I win?  Fix my fucking teeth.  I wait until $200M, because I have probably 60 or less years of life left, and I want to be able to do whatever I want during that time.  Despite the ridiculous odds against me, I hope I win.  I bet if you bought a ticket, you hope you do to.  One of us should, that’s for sure.  If I win, we can party at this secret, undisclosed hidden bunker I write from.  By invitation.

Let’s see…  a billion to one chance of me winning, times the odds you’ll get invited to the celebration…  Like THAT’s a prize, am I right?  woo…, hang out with Deon…  Please, Deon, at least promise there will be liquor.  Since I can’t even promise better writing, I can’t promise much.  Plus, who says you’ll even be invited?   I can’t promise I won’t suffer a complete loss of memory of anything I’ve ever written down here even if reminded.  Maybe I’ll turn into a total ass if I win.  Maybe I was an ass the whole time.

Except you, you know who you are, and if you’re not sure I’ll stalk you online, and find your address, as if I don’t know that already, and send you an engraved invite and a lifetime pass to the bunker.  Of course, you already knew my real personality (Deon Mumple, annoying ass.) the whole time.  I bet you’d hang out with me even if I DIDN’T win the lottery.

I know all of you are hoping this blog will feature better, more regular writing.  If I win, you might get…. more regular writing, because I’ll have more time.  Sorry to dash that other part of your hope.  I’m hoping my laptop will stop randomly deleting entire paragraphs so I can write a bit faster and not have to try to remember whatever bullshit I was expounding on.  Pounding the keyboard doesn’t work, but I can’t figure out how to ex-pound.  Thank fuck I found the Alt+Z combination.  The trolls wish I could figure out the delete key makes everything better, and in its’ tortured mechanical wisdom and soul-less love for all things good on the internet, my keyboard is sick of this shit and wishes I would stop.  And despite the odds, you’ve kept reading.  Thank you.

Here’s to hoping for better things, and better days.

Fail, Miserable Fail, and Epic Fail

I have minor annoyances, irritations, full-on depressive-rage-inducing triggers, and everything in between.  And yet I keep trying.  And yet I keep patiently waiting.  And yet I bother to foster hope in my heart.  It’s a consequence of my faith in God.  That’s right, I blame him for this stupidity.  But at least I’m not this bad:

It’s the last minute and thirty eight seconds.  Jesus, I wish I had that much hope.  A prayer, not blasphemy, mum, really.

Mitzi Gaynor, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, bless their hearts, try hard in their world of impending armageddon, post-depression depression, racism, war, poverty, to cast a warm, home-appreciating, loving, hopeful spin on it all.  Including the whip-poor-will, a bird whose song was a death omen to the Native Americans.  Not dramatic, like a Norse Valkyrie, flying in to take the souls of the valiant fallen to Valhalla, but almost teasing.

I’ve listened to the whip-poor-will, and honestly, I don’t know if it’s a song of hope or impending doom.  They’re nocturnal and they eat bugs, so that’s always a good thing.  Bats do too.   I say, let them eat all the flying, nocturnal, infernal things.  Mosquitoes.  Moths.  Flies.  Beetles.  So maybe it’s a good thing to hear a whip-poor-will.  They’re hungry and they don’t eat souls, they eat the damned bugs.  Maybe Mitzi wasn’t wrong.

I am certain the same shit that happens to me happens to everyone.  Bug bites.  Thistles in the yard.  Weeds and thistles in the garden. Bruises. Traffic.  Bullshit politics at work.  Not having enough money to do shit you have to do.  We all have to improvise and play the games.  But that’s exactly the kind of minor annoyance, the kind of irritation that builds up.  And then the triggers hit- death, destruction, helpless chaos, poverty, broken tooth decay, war, racism, and being called fucking “privileged.”  The house falling apart when you don’t have enough money to fix the rotten boards on the outside of the house that are rotting because the construction asshats didn’t build it right.  Plumbing.  Flooring.  Carpeting.  Or being told, of my situation, “it’s not that bad.”  Or being told, “you’re not good enough and nothing you do will ever be enough.”

The answer to all of this is money.  I want the answer to be “yes.”  If I was so fucking privileged, I’d be able to answer that shit, so shut the fuck up, because by saying I’m privileged and the reason I can’t imagine I’m privileged is because I’m an oblivious racist, makes you an oblivious racist.  I try hard not to break laws and try hard not to draw attention to myself and I try hard not to offend, piss off, or threaten people in authority who have fucking guns, and if you feel threatened by cops maybe you should act like me.

If I really were privileged I wouldn’t be driving an old rusty car that needs new tires and a tune up and a few sensors that are tripping my check engine light and an oil change and better seals because there’s water in the floorboards and I didn’t drive through any deep water in the recent rainstorm or leave my windows down.  If I really were privileged I’d make more money than whichever people of whatever race get hired as newbies, instead of them starting out with more than I earn after 10 years at the company.

And yet, despite all these triggers, I get up and go in to work every day when I’m not scheduled off, I still do the dishes and laundry and other chores despite my kids making excuses – “I have homework!”  “I have an after-school activity.”  “I’m tired.”  Or the ever popular “I don’t want to.”  In their defense, when the kids realize I’m about to lose my shit, they do what I asked, and they’ve been pretty good for the last couple of days without me or Mrs M having to bitch too much.  Despite all these triggers I’m not paralyzed or deciding to tell life, and people, and my boss and my company and my family and my church and the world to go fuck themselves.  I still have hope.  It’s God’s fault.  Because I think if I didn’t believe there must be something better after this shit hole, I’d surrender.

I fail all the damn time, at the simplest little shitty things.  But I go on.  Sure, occasionally there are little emotional breakdowns.  Sure, there are occasionally screaming fits, and even occasionally rage directed at God because I don’t have the strength to deal with the shit he’s allowing to come into my life. There’s a verse I was taught some time ago that goes “A righteous man falls seven times.”  Yeah, well, I’m not particularly righteous, and I know the rest of that verse.  The whole thing goes, “though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”  And in the context it’s about telling people not to steal shit that isn’t theirs.  

I like verse 19 and 20 a whole lot better than 15 and 16.  “Do not fret because of evildoers or be envious of the wicked, for the evildoer has no future hope, and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out.”  The problem there is, even if I’m “good,” and not a “wicked” “evildoer,” I’m headed for the same fate for this present life.  King Solomon collected or wrote these proverbs.  His dad King David wrote a lot of the psalms.  David’s music director and co-composer Asaph, confessed in writing that he watched the shit people not only got away with but got rich doing, and it caused him to almost give up on doing what was right (Psalm 73).  Later the prophet Jeremiah (the weeping prophet?) wrote to ask God why.  So if I take any comfort it’s that I know people are doing the same shit they did three fucking thousand years ago and God is still making a way for people like me to just barely get through.  Sure, I’d love the abundance of John 10:10.  But abundance to me might mean something different than abundance to God.  I wish I could figure this shit out.

I fail, I get up.  It doesn’t mean I’m “righteous,” it means I’m stubborn.  It doesn’t mean I swell with hope, it means I haven’t given up all hope yet.

I bought milk yesterday, saving a dollar because of the brand at the store I picked.  It’s all milk, right?  Wrong.  Young Ms. M was equipped with a super-taster, or so she alleges.  She won’t drink that one.  Not to mention, the plastic jug has a leak somewhere.  Fail.  Fail.  Fail.  Fuck.  But it’s only three dollars wasted.  Except, instead of being nice and buying milk I could have bought a lottery ticket and might have won $151 million.  Then she can go to the fucking dairy herself and pick out her own fucking cow.  I’m not sure if she was offended by the hole in the jug or by the fact I confessed the milk I bought was cheaper than its’ next door neighbor in the same damned refrigerated case.  I tried to save a little money and ended up just throwing it away.  Fail.  It was a trigger because I seem to have the innate ability to disappoint everyone no matter how hard I try.

So I’m triggered right now, and I really don’t want to do anything, but life calls and I fucking have to fucking answer it.  I’m going to go answer something right now.  If you draw any encouragement from me being so stubborn, I hope that it is to NOT give up yourselves.

The whip-poor-will is good, and people misjudge it.  Except Mitzi.  And maybe I’m good and those closest to me misjudge me.  Including me.  I would like to think I’m good enough, that is to say, adequate.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m actually “good.” Because I know the real me that you don’t.  But I sure would like to either have the hope of a Mitzi song, or a few hundred million dollars, or more preferably, both.

After I answer the tasks that I have to handle, if I remember to, I’m going to buy a ticket if I can scrape up a buck or two.  Wish me luck.  Or pray, because I still believe God’s the one who picks the winner, and maybe I’ll have thrown away not just the money I wasted on the milk but an extra dollar on top of it, but maybe He’ll pick me.

Cynical optimism, I think that’s what it is.  It certainly isn’t cockeyed.  Because I start out thinking I have a chance, but I balance it with the knowledge that I may also have just took out a one dollar bill and lit a match to it.   Meh.  I’ll go back to work on Monday and try that shit again.

Not happy.  Not hopeless.  Somewhere in between.  Hope sits in there with me, and although I wish it were a better companion, I could think of worse ones.  

This One Looks Funny

It must be a certain kind of perversity in my soul.  I started the day with a title in mind, “Disenfranchised,” but I wasn’t inspired to write anything on that.

Vocabulary.Com says Disenfranchised means “stripped of power.”  It goes on to say, ” The rules work against you, your rights are constantly violated, and you have little power to change your life for the better. The Old French word enfranchir means “to make free,” and when you add the negative prefix dis-, disenfranchised means “made unfree.””

I read friends’ blogs in between fits of being forced to work today, and tried to listen to some music but every time I started the music up, the phone rang.  Which is why I need a job that doesn’t say “able to handle constant interruptions.”  Interruptions suck bad enough, but imagine you’re a person who likes to focus on and complete one task before moving on to another, who gets upset when interrupted. It’s on the autism spectrum, and you may not believe it, but autism runs in my family. The first to be diagnosed were my nephews.   My sister had dyslexia before there was anything called dyslexia.  I have a little bit of attention deficit disorder.  I got it from dad.  Surprised you, didn’t I?  Add cyclothymia in all its’ glory.  Add anger issues, difficulty interfacing with society, blah, blah, those diagnostics all seem to describe me to some degree, but there are other factors that keep me from feeling like I ought to go get all my issues diagnosed.  Like for instance, being labelled.  Like being stigmatized.  Like being medicated beyond the symptoms and into the side effects.  Like, incurring additional medical cost when I’m already over budget, and becoming mired in a financial system designed to continually keep me powerless to escape.

There might be good side-effects.  Like being able to actually take time off for mental health reasons when I need a day off.  Like my wife not being able to be in denial, and understanding and helping me handle some of the emotional and other, um, er, ah… effects of the diagnosis.  Like my needing a little bit more attention in certain… areas, iykwim.    If you don’t know what I mean, ask your doctor about bipolar symptoms and marriage.  They know.

This list was amusing because when I blog and when I write it has to flow unless I’m in a poetry thing where I’m going with an idea and filling a frame.  Frames are either helpful constructs that guide you, or they trap you inside them.  Helpful constructs, that’s what poetry forms are, to me.  I can force that sometimes if I have an idea and a frame, or a frame comes out in the first few lines.  Traps are things like that 30 day goal sheet.  I don’t have the discipline to use a frame like the above to write.  Or maybe I do but I get depressed when I fail.  I used to set New Year’s Resolutions, like almost everyone else I know, but I gave up.

For Lent this year, and every year, I gave up giving up things for Lent.  I lose focus.  I tried to read the Bible, a book I know pretty well, through in a few months, and got discouraged because I couldn’t do it.  Mrs M wanted to give up sweets and chocolate, but that wasn’t what I wanted.  I wanted some fucking chocolate, for fucks’ sake!  I lost focus on the goal because of the tasks, skipped a day here and there, couldn’t catch up, didn’t make the goal.  Depressing.  I’ve read it, just not that quickly or daily.

If I have to write something to fit a frame, if it’s something long term, I am just going to be depressed because I have to write something, it has to be on topic, it becomes a burden instead of something I’m just inspired to create.  And this is why, I suppose, I can’t find a job, and get paid, as a writer.  How depressing.  For someone who can deal with high structure and discipline, this list might be pure gold.  For me, this list represents iron shackles and an orange jumpsuit.  The only thing I want that’s orange and high in iron is a screwdriver made with iron-fortified juice, and please, tip that vodka bottle a second or two extra, thank you.

That, what I’ve just written, explains why I feel disenfranchised as a writer.  And disenfranchised in life. And just like that, voilà!  An entry is made into my blog, a natural process, nothing forced.  But I had to wait until after “work” was over, so I could do it without being interrupted.  And I had to really want to finish it.  Sometimes I can do that for a topic, and other times I get distracted and go off.

I think if we were all a bit more free, instead of life making us always feel “made unfree,” things might flow a little bit better.  If I were enfranchised, I might even make money from my writing, which I dearly love to do.  When it’s natural, not forced.  But the definition of a job includes some disenfranchisement, which discourages me.

If my wife would help with the more personal aspects, if a publisher wanted to take on a writer and compensate him exceptionally well when said writer was able to write, I might feel “enfranchised.”  It’s probably too much to ask.  Which is why I bought another lottery ticket yesterday.  Here’s hoping I get all three things I want.

The title?  I meant the list looked funny, not that I was watching a clown.  I AM the clown.  Send me in.

~DM

I Don’t Want a Drug That Makes Me Happy

It’s fine.  Don’t get me wrong.  A drug that could make us happy might be all right.  That’s why so many people like heroin or ecstasy or alcohol or whatever.  But for me, just me, I don’t want a drug that makes me happy.  If I have to have something to be happy, Mrs. M knows exactly what I want and she says “good night, sad boy.”  Kidding.  She doesn’t always say that.  Mostly it’s just “I’m going to bed, good night.”  She says she loves me in the morning, but normally doesn’t speak the language my brain needs to hear.  I wish she was bilingual, speaking both her own love language and mine.  Alas, she tries, sometimes, and far too occasionally, but speaks with a really difficult to understand accent most of the time.

I don’t want a drug that makes me happy.  She wishes I did.  If I took a drug that made me happy and feeling fa la la (la la, la la, la la) all day it might be great.  For her.  But what about what’s making me not happy?  Or, what about what I need, or want, that would make me happy?

Needs and wants, needs and wants.  It’s the ongoing wrestling match between me and the world and between me and God if you will, because Paul claimed,

Philippians 4:19 (new international version)
“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”:

Christ followers quickly jump on my case and tell me that if my “needs” aren’t met it’s because I don’t “need” them.  To which, the only appropriate response -or is it inappropriate? – seems to be a hearty “Fuck you.”

If God doesn’t think I need what I think I need then let God fix my brain so I only want what I need.  And further, let God fix my brain so getting what I need is enough to make me happy.

I don’t want a drug that makes me happy.  I want a life that makes me happy.  If I got what I wanted, I might be happy.  I say “might,” because I know a lot of people , a few of which seem to have everything they want, and I honestly don’t know if it makes them really happy.  And there are performers out there, whose lives went under microscopes because they suicided while seeming to have everything they wanted and obviously that wasn’t enough to make them happy.

I’m being a bit selfish, maybe.  In no particular order, here are 10 things that, having all of them, might make me happy, and I do want all of them:

10: reciprocal affections from Mrs. M- top of the list, because I may be old but I’m not dead.  As with the above suggestion of how it would be nice if God made me want just what I needed and provided the same per the written promise, it would also be nice if she wanted what I wanted and vice versa and we met each other reciprocally.
9: freedom to date and romance Mrs. M- next on the list because it would just be nice to be able to go out once in a while without worrying about the bank account.  Dating and romance might lead to #10, I say “might” because she might still be too tired to indulge my whims, not to mention the whole love language miscommunication issue.  I’m somewhat thankful here, that she hasn’t mentioned any plans to kick me to the curb, but the bank account issue brings us to
8: freedom to choose my menu instead of always having to eat on the cheap.  Yes, (fuck you,) there are starving children who don’t have choices, but this is my list and it’s intent is indulging ME.  And yes, there is a dollar menu, I’m acquainted with that and it’s sometimes acceptable, but sadly I am more acquainted with instant cup of soup and ramen than I want to be.
7: freedom to pay bills on time, every time- I’m somewhat thankful here because the electric company hasn’t shut off the power, and the banks aren’t repossessing my shit.  But I would be happy if I were not on the cliff side looking down and waiting expectantly for the next avalanche.  I’m also thankful that more shit hasn’t fallen apart, but with that decay in mind I would currently like to have
6: freedom to fix
-teeth- something I’m somewhat thankful for, I don’t hurt often or much but these cracked teeth are a bitch. It would be nice to get dental implants, but for the moment I’d just like to have the remaining fragments removed properly to avoid infection.
5:   -cars – something I’m somewhat thankful for, they both run and get us from A to B.  We’re both due for oil changes, but it’d also be quite nice to get the chronic check engine light off on her car.
4:   -heat- the heat exchange has cracked, which means CO emissions are possible, potentially leaking into the house if we run it.  It’s currently shut off.  We spent our savings on the damned AC already, something I’m also somewhat thankful for is that we were able to afford that somehow before the global warming fries us all, and also thankful that near the end of the cold season we didn’t all die from CO leakage.
3:  time and energy to
-finish a project.  Those who share my twisted joy that Dexter is still on Netflix will share a grim grin and a slight cringe recalling a quote, “I’m taking on a project.” (Season 4)  So yet another thing I’m thankful for.  But I have taken on a few projects that need focus and inspiration, and time, to finish, and I need time and focus and inspiration to finish them.  Two projects are creative in nature but I just can’t get away long enough to do anything I feel is worthwhile.  I hear you telling me to divide it up and do one small section at a time, and I wish that was how it worked.  In fact, I wish I knew how it worked so I could work it.  The other projects are repair and maintenance projects and they’re ongoing and they steal what energy I might otherwise devote to the creative.
2.  -clean neglected areas of the house.  When I’m on my way to somewhere, the dirty dishes in the sink call to me.  When I’m on my way out, and have to visit my bathroom, I always notice it- the floor looks dusty.  When I’m fixing food or washing dishes, the kitchen floor needs sweeping and mopping.  When I’m headed to some required appointment, I observe that the carpets are really in need of replacement but I’ll settle for shampooing them, and when I’m exhausted and fall into bed I’m aware there is dust on the ceiling fan and on the things in my bedroom, and clutter that needs putting away.  With this in mind, I am grateful to have a home in need of grooming, which brings us to my next happiness inducer, time and energy to
1.  -groom and schedule myself.  It might be nice if my schedule were regimented.  Wake, shit, shower, shave, breakfast, write, work, exercise, dinner, chores, errands, projects, write, sex, sleep, sex, sleep.  But even if I tried such regimen there would be interruptions and denials of access that would drive my compulsivity batshit.  I realize the trip to batshit is a short one, shut up.  So maybe regimented with the freedom to lapse if I need to, or if I choose to.  Also, there are things in life that one can’t schedule, which makes the whole idea impossible to achieve until or unless I am free to do “what I want, when I want (to whomever I want,” another Dexter reference that just popped in my head to make me laugh at myself-season 3).  And then, if I were free, would I do it?  So I’m grateful yet again for a few things- a) that I’m able to laugh at myself, b) that Mrs. M doesn’t obsess too much over my physical appearance or my wardrobe choices and c) hasn’t kicked me to the curb in favor of someone closer to prepackaged perfection in those areas.  I saw a girl (I say, “girl,” but she was in her late 20s or early 30s, whatever, they’re all too young and I’m all too married for any of that) on Sunday who obviously has nothing but time on her hands.  She had her eyebrows perfect, and her eye makeup perfect and her dressy-casual outfit perfect, and she was talking to her perfect friends who were scheduling the perfect lunch after church.  I looked over at my wife, and with no free time on her hands had herself nearer to perfection than any other woman could under the same circumstances.  She rocks.  Damn, I’m a lucky man, how the fuck did I win Mrs. M?
0. Yup, “Oops, I did it again.”  another list of 10 that has 11.  I want the freedom to intervene on behalf of friends who(m? my grammar sensibilities are shut off at the moment, so if it’s wrong, sorry) I know are in greater need than me.  But I can’t because I’m swamped with my own issues.  There’s no money, there’s no time, there’s no extra margin.  So all I get to  do is pray and hope my prayers on their behalf are answered better than prayers on my own behalf are answered.  I bought a $1 fucking lottery ticket, with an exchange rate of 1:203,000,000.  Sounds great, if it pays me.  And when I win, I’ll see about this damned list. And yes, I’m somewhat grateful that I had a $1 lingering in my wallet so I could have my one shot at the jackpot.  We’ll see.  Freedom is a dream devoutly to be wished, and I’m wishing.

Disappointment- another word dissection

Hello again and welcome to Deon’s Dissection Table and Random Rambling.  Today on the table we have another word:  Disappointment.

I have to tell you, I still feel a deep connection to my bitterness, but I’ll take a good thing and tell it all day too.  So today I have something more positive.  Trust me!  I promise! I know, you’ve heard that line before from other guys, but hey, I’m Deon, and I approved this message.  If I’ve ever lied to you before, shut the hell up, or tell your own fish story in the comments below IF YOU DARE!!  I have secret powers and I’ll do…something about it. No one will believe you anyway.

My bitterness chafes me almost as much as Ben’s bitterness chafes him.  Go.  Go now and read the better bitterness of Ben.  Ben makes me feel like I’m just a little less lonely in the world.  I read his blog and commiserate in the suffering and bitterness, and there’s usually a hint of humour in spite of the bitterness, unlike my own writing which has had most of the real humour sucked out of it, along with most of the life, all of the creativity, and none of the lameness.  Sucked.  Out.  Which leaves me aware that, like a black hole of emptiness, my writing sucks.  Again, if I’m lying, just tell me all about it in your comments IF YOU DARE!!

Proverbs 13:12 is my favorite verse today.  I like part B a whole HELL of a lot more than part A.  Part A is all about the fucking waiting.  I HATE waiting, which I’ve spent most of my life doing.  While working my ass off, not making any progress in life toward wealth or success.  Mother Theresa can have all my poverty, I think she secretly liked it. And so can all those success preachers.  Part A is all about the word of the day, “disappointment.”  Bitterness chafes me and the disapp- ointment I was given for it ISN’T FUCKING HELPING.  Maybe it’ll help you:

Disapp™ Ointment!  Try some today!!

Proverbs 13:12 New International Version (NIV)

¹² Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
    but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

I said there would be something good so here it is:  I experienced something I can only describe as divine timing, no shit.  I mean, holy shit.  We’ve had quite a bit of rain so the grass was pretty high.  Like a few other people I know, I have two yards to take care of.  My own, and a lawn owned by a couple of senior citizens.  Hint: my mum is one of those.   We had a break in the rain and a bit of heat, I had an appointment cancel, and was able to finish mum’s grass RIGHT before the rain and dark overtook the daylight.  I heard the thunder, wrapped it up, put it away, and I swear, cats, dogs and elephants started falling from the sky, splashing down in great torrents. I had just enough time to get it done. Dad’s stamina is not up to the magnitude of his yard, but his neighborhood demands it be kept under reasonable control.  Mine does that to me too, fuckers.  When it rains, they want me to cut it.  When it doesn’t rain they want me to pay for the extra water bill, so I have to cut it.  Or they want me to pay someone to handle it.  Fuckers, if you want my lawn to be on the cover of some fucking magazine, YOU pay the bill to maintain it to your standard of beauty.  I don’t even like to SHAVE, and don’t want to have to do your bidding on my grass. I watched the neighbor’s fucking DOG shit in my yard (presumably again), today.  I actually witnessed it, so the droppings get nicely thrown back into their yard when I mow again.  Fuck you, dog owner who can’t be arsed to train the dog to shit in your own yard, or “curb” it yourself.  “Curb” has come to mean “pick up your dog’s shit,” and socially I can understand the graceful etiquette behind the word choice.  What I don’t understand is the lack of some dog owner’s etiquette of not going behind their dog’s behind and picking that shit up if it’s not in their own damned yard.

It was hard work, stopping all too often to clean dad’s old mower from clogged mulchy bits of grassy gunk.  It was no fun.  But I celebrated when I was finally done.  I literally thanked God.  Who else would have held off the rain just long enough? Satan would have rained all over my grass-stained ass, and then instead of a “thank you,” all I’d have had left was a gracias.  I mean a grassy-ass. Then the next day, and today, I’m still sore for the adventure.  And next week sometime(s) I’ll go back over and do it again.  It’s a sprawling estate, not like my tiny little yard, that thing goes on forever and it’s a push mower without a self-driving mechanism to pull itself along.  But I’ll say it again.  The weather forecast lied late last week and I didn’t expect the rain when I was trying to finish before, but two days ago, it was perfect timing.  Divine timing.  Maybe not a big miracle to you, but I’ll take them when they come and try to call attention to them.  This was very affirming to my faith, despite my nearness to my bitterness.

The verse means, “Waiting sucks ass, but when you finally get what you want, it’s all good.”

No, I am NOT going to write The Bible According to Saint (though alternately regarded) Deon.  If you look through those letters you’ll see how that would quickly become the B-a-s-t-a-r-d Bible, and I want no part of that.

I was, and still am, disappointed by the Lottery Commission’s refusal to announce the real winning numbers for the recent $430M prize, which were clearly printed on MY fucking ticket.  This was MY “appointment,” and they “dis”-sed me.  So now some poor schmuck in New Jersey has to explore the many bitterness-inducing facets of sudden wealth.  I was actually prepared to deal with them, but this guy?  He’s totally caught off guard, without a plan.  Watch him for me.  I can’t stand to look, while he stumbles through dealing with the whole thing.  The problems of being able to pay his bills on time.  The problems of being free to not have to work at a dead-end job that sucks ass and doesn’t pay enough to live on.  The problems of figuring out which new car(s) to buy, or which home to live in, or which accessories to have installed on your new bass boat.  I mean, where do you put the extra beer-filled cooler and the snacks, for fuck’s sake?  The thing has to stay afloat!  The problems of having the freedom to hire someone to handle your acreage.  The problem of always being able to hire the guy to fix whatever breaks around the house.  The problem of being able to help people who really need help, helping people who’ve been your friend WHILE your income sucked right out the bill-chute faster than you could earn it.  The problem of figuring out what to do with all that free time. The problem of the continuous muscle aches from all the smiling and laughing.  And, finally, the biggest problem of all, the problem of having to tell all your newest “old friends” to fuck off.  I was ready to deal with ALL of these problems.

I WAS READY!!

So I’ll be ready the next time it tops $200M.  See, I’m even willing and ready to handle a jackpot HALF as big as the last big one.  And, being magnanimous as I am, I’ll even pony up an extra $2 before the payout, so the commission doesn’t look bad for the last mix up.

I’m looking forward to part B.  But I don’t want my bass boat up “a tree of life.”

Have as happy a day as possible.

DM

Duh News

I tried to write something worthwhile yesterday and didn’t get shit worth posting.  I’ll see what happens today.  Or maybe whatever comes out comes out.

I read a news article about some poor schmuck in Georgia who won the lottery and some assholes blew his door in with a shotgun and then killed the guy.  This is why the Lottery should provide protection, or allow anonymity, or both to winners in every state.  And this is why every United States citizen should be allowed to carry a personal firearm.  Because some people are just fucking animals that need to be put down when they decide to do crazy shit.  Like depriving a citizen of their “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Are you listening, lottery commissioners?  Are you listening, anti-gun idiots?  The people who did the shotgun thing wouldn’t have been deprived of their wrongs to have a shotgun, even in a place that says people don’t have rights and can’t have guns, because if they’re criminals they’d have gotten one illegally.  If I won, lesson learned, 1) I’d hide somewhere quiet and isolated and stay quietly hidden, and 2) I’d arm myself.  And consider having my name legally changed.  There’s a thought:  what name would I choose if I won the lottery?  What name would you choose?  We’ll have to keep our aliases secret.

I saw another news article about Michael Bloomberg, who may run for president.  Why the hell do these billionaires want to buy a ticket to the White House?  I can think of much better, much quieter, things to do with a few billion.  Mike, there, has assets of an estimated net between $36 and $41 Billion.  And the other scary question is, what would they do to help poor people when they get into office?  Answer:  Same thing they’ve done all their lives. According to Wikipedia, Bloomberg has donated an estimated $1.8B to various charities.”  Not a bad record, although I’d be more impressed if that number was between $3B and $4B. Or more, since those are present assets, not income.  Not that I’d measure up to my own expectation, unless I were really financially set at complete liberty to do what I really wanted to with money.  He seems practical and good with money, for sure.  But I’m still not sure about how he feels about common people, considering his waffled stance on certain criminalized behaviors, and I think you know what I mean.

“The Donald” has about a tenth of that, at $4 and a half Billion in current assets.  His charitable work on “Celebrity Apprentice” is commendable, although he drew a substantial salary from the network, and the contestants raised funds, as opposed to Trump making donations himself.  One can’t presume Mr. Trump is not privately charitable, presuming that his financial statements are private.  But he has made several statements that really marginalized certain groups of people, which raise serious questions about how he feels about common people who might not fall under the umbrellas of his favorite charities.  It’s also possible Trump may have been financially disadvantaged more than Bloomberg, since Bloomberg has only had one divorce compared to Trump’s two.  Having your assets split once is uncomfortable enough, imagine it happening twice and having to start over each time.

Look carefully at what the candidates have done and decide if you want more of the same going on in the country.  Vote for the ones you have evidence of doing what you would want to have done, on a bigger scale, because that’s what will happen.  I hear of candidates, rumors of scandals, grand foolishness, cover-ups, etc.  I guarantee you we will only see more of the same things that they’re already doing or have already done.

If I did win it big, where would we move?  Where would you move?  I wonder how isolated I can be and not set off the “He’s-Loco” Radars.  Like the unabomber or the cults or the occupiers or whatever other gun-toting crazies or secessionist groups might be out there in Oklahoma or Montana or Arkansas.  Because crazy as I may be, and isolated and gun-owning as I would be, I don’t want to piss off the government, and rich as I might be I don’t want to set off anyone’s “he’s-rich” radars and have the neighbors blasting through my compound gates to kill me or my family like poor Craigory Burch.  Where do “the Donald” and Mr. Bloomberg get their security teams?  One should choose wisely.  One also wonders what Mr. Trump and Mr. Bloomberg were doing that caused their spouses to make their exits.  And one hopes they have found whatever they were looking for and learned whatever they needed to learn from those failed relationships.

I think if you get a divorce, you should handle your obligations properly, and leave graciously. Leave, and live, so graciously, you make your ex look bad for leaving or asking you to leave. Take care of the kids even if you don’t get custody.  Make the courts, and the guardians ad litem out there, speak glowing things about you.  Don’t fight, don’t be mean.  Be better than civil.  Although, if you’ve already been bitter and mean about whatever is bad about the relationship, your ex has no reason to expect anything different.  Surprise your ex.  Surprise the courts.  Don’t be an ass.  Take responsibility, even if in your heart of hearts you believe it isn’t your fault.  If it is your fault and you’re still being an ass, well, you’re worthless and whoever you’re shtupping deserves you and can expect the same treatment (Ha, I said “shtupping,” and I’m not even Jewish or even Yiddish).  Whatever.  I take it back, if you’re an ass, whoever you’re shtupping deserves better than you.

I didn’t sign a prenuptial agreement.  My wife and I have an understanding, and a verbal contract I spoke into existence.  I sign the checks over (via direct deposit) and she spends them.  I’m hers, what’s mine is hers, and what’s hers is hers.  We discuss any major expenses, and a few minor ones.  This weekend I wanted fried chicken, and she went to an overpriced place and got a little chicken for a lot of money.  It was good, but I felt she paid too much and got too little.  She felt bad when I said something, and then I felt bad.  She won’t go back to this fried chicken distributor, which I won’t mention by name, unless there’s a significant coupon involved.  I’m sure she’ll find another fried chicken distributor to visit, because I do love it.  And, venture capitalism isn’t all bad, but I’ll just say that when you already charge too much for chicken meal, you shouldn’t charge extra to get a drink with your meal.  It should be included in the price.

I’m hyper-conservative financially.  I might go out to lunch once in a blue moon.  Or in a leap year.  Its’ frequency is somewhere between the frequency of those kinds of events.  And what will I do if I come into money?  The same things I’ve done all along, or wanted to do all along.  She still gets everything, and I might go out to lunch a little more frequently.  I hope, when it happens, I do a little better than Bloomberg on my percentage.  But he’s done respectably well, considering.  Maybe he considers his ex a charity, which I bet would bump that percentage significantly.  I don’t read about him being a jerk, so there’s a possibility he’s gracious about his losses.

I don’t even think I’d be as liberal as either of these guys:

I’m so conservative I believe it’s true, “it’s cheaper to keep her,” not to mention I WANT her, so Mrs. M., whether she feels fortunate or not, is stuck with me until she kicks me to the curb. Whereupon, I still want to wash her dishes and take out her trash and help her kids with homework, even if I lose out on certain other fringe benefits if you know what I mean.  It’s kind of cool realizing I want what I already have.  And if we ever do win big, Mrs. M., (not that you’re reading this, but) you’ll get a much cooler name than “Mumple.”  You pick it, I don’t care what you call me as long as you call me.  And I’ll have time to fry my own damned chicken.  I just want to add pets to our family.  I love you, Mrs. M.  Now and forever.

~Deon

Entitlement

THIS is a huge part of what’s wrong with America:  Entitlement.

I bought 4 lottery tickets over two weeks, just to have my one single chance to win the jackpot.  Grand total cost:  $8.  I didn’t expect to win, because when the odds are astronomical against you, a rational person doesn’t expect it.  But I had approximately a 0.00000034247% chance of winning just like everyone else.

I’ve never been to Las Vegas.  I couldn’t call myself a “gambler,” except in the sense that I’ll proverbially light a match to $2 and buy a lottery ticket instead of a cup of coffee.  I’m not an addict (except to coffee).  The lottery ticket is stamped, and the adverts read, “please play responsibly.”  And then there’s Cinnamon Nicole.  Poor Cinnamon spent the rent money because she thought she’d win the billion dollar prize.

I followed the links to Go Fund me, and I can’t find the request.  But a lot of media outlets have picked it up.  I saw this one on twitter.  It’s either bogus or she’s already got every penny she asked for.  IF she got it, what the fuck is  wrong with people?  The story from 96.1 shows clearly that she intends to DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

I’m not entitled to reimbursement of my $8.  Fuck me, I blew that $8 of my own free and irresponsible will and I don’t deserve shit.  I’m gorgeous, and employed (really) and I wanted that prize more than anyone on the planet.  Or a piece of it.  But am I so financially irresponsible as to spend the fucking rent and food money on a 0.000273976% chance of winning?  Fuck, no.  Her odds DID improve, but she still fucking lost, just like I did my $8.  She’s one of those people, that if she DID win the lottery it would be wasted.

I don’t even feel entitled to have someone give me $1.  I’ve been the recipient of charitable actions, and I’m very grateful.  When we hit financial hard times, my wife went to work asking around.  And she got a job.  And, some kind people felt inclined to help with gently used coats for our kids for this winter, and even a few presents at Christmas.  I am blessed.  But I’m not entitled.  A gofundme account would be my statement of entitlement.

The government says I’m entitled to food stamps, but I haven’t signed up.  We have enough food on the table.  I don’t want the government to worry about little me, since we have better than a trillion dollar national debt already.  I feel irresponsible too, which diminishes my sense of personal entitlement even more.  I did not save up for my dental implants. I suppose that $8 could have gone into the $4K pot to eventually pay for two.  But one wonders, while saving $8 every 2 weeks for 5 years to buy them, how many other teeth will crack?  If the government and my employer can’t sponsor decent medical and dental insurance to make implants affordable on my income, I have another reason I don’t want to be on their doles.

Maybe I should just gofundme for all of my living expenses.  What the hell, the world can pay my rent, buy our steak and wine, pay our medical and dental expenses and car repair and maintenance, and buy my wife something nice on top of everything else.  If I could convince donors to meet my living expenses, I would set up a budget a little bigger than what we’re able to spend right now so I can eventually retire, and then live very conservatively.  Just like I do right now.  Or maybe not.  Maybe the gofundme community could pony up $1.4B.  “Is that a lot to ask?” he inquires, smiling just as cute as Cinnamon Nicole.

I have no desire to ever go to Las Vegas, or any other casino ridden place.  And when the lottery tops $100M again, I’ll buy a single ticket, if I have an extra $2.  If I used that $2 to buy my kids some random indulgence, like for instance, milk, or a dozen eggs, and I don’t have it extra, I won’t.  I have certain priorities in life, so I’ll spend money on those important things first, if I have it.  And if I don’t, I have to wait and juggle the priorities, like which broken car things to fix and which to tell the mechanic to “let it ride.”  (As the great Craig Ferguson says, “Did you see what I did there?”)  Yeah, just living in reality is enough of a gamble.  The car could need more money, the kids, the wife, the house, the heat, could go (and have gone) out and require we spend it faster. It’s a gamble.  Shit happens in real life and sometimes it costs more than the normal living expenses of clothes and rent and food and gas for the car.  One has to have a plan, like I irresponsibly didn’t, for my aging teeth.  For adult beverages.  Or therapy.

Cinnamon, honey, you’re young and lovely and some very kind and generous people have given you a second chance at living in the real world. If I had done that, a lot of people would say, “you fucked yourself, so now you’re fucked, fucker!”  But it didn’t happen for you, people were nice because you asked nicely and you’re absolutely beautiful, I know there are a lot of people who just can’t say no to someone with a pretty face.  So now it’s time to grow up and learn a little bit about math.  When you learn how to work with numbers, I mean really work with them, you’ll understand statistically that 0.00027 is almost the same as zero.  The lottery is a fantasy and you have the same snowball’s chance in hell as everyone else, no matter how many tickets you buy.  First, buy milk and groceries, pay the rent, put gas in the car, set a little aside for emergencies and retirement, and then, if you have an extra $2, (or $800, because if it’s your “mad” money, who gives a shit how much you spend?) you can light that up on a lottery ticket and I won’t call you part of the problem ever again.

I still can dream.  Maybe, just maybe, there’s a few random people with an extra $75K a year they are itching to give to someone, plus the college funds for my kids.  Not that I’m worthy, or entitled, but that I want it.  It would be a huge raise in my wage, since right now we’re sitting somewhere in what the government considers poverty (but not filth and squalor, whatever the hell squalor adds to filth, since I like to clean).  It would pay for my teeth.  It would pay for our cars.  Hell, I wouldn’t need two, since we wouldn’t need to have jobs, we’d only need one to go to the store.  It would pay for nice food, and I’d be able to go out with my wife once in a while.  It would pay for our haircuts and manicures.  Right now, this handsome devil has his wife cut his hair and he cuts and files his own damn nails.  I could buy a nice suit, from somewhere other than Goodwill.  I’m not betting on it.  I’m dreaming.  Just let me dream.

Sooo, about Deon’s PleasePayForMyLifeForMeIWantToBeIrresponsibleToo account…  who’s buying?!

My Big Lottery Acrostic Announcements

1.  SHIT!  And that is for the record.
2.  Oh well!
3.  Realistically, I only had a 1 in 292 or so MILLION, I had as much hope as the next person.
4.  Right, well, back to work.  Fuck.  I REALLY REALLY wanted to win, and if not me then
5.  You.  If you won, hook me up with two dental implants maybe?  Oh and if you follow my blog I’ve got a friend who needs a new car.  Those were the first things I’d have bought if I won.